Happiness

‘Happiness: Lessons from a new science’, by Richard Layard.

In a nutshell, ‘Happiness’ is a summary of the scientific study of happiness. It is possible to measure it, argues Layard, and we can work out what causes more of it and less of it. Thus equipped, we should structure our society around those things that make us happy. “Here we are as a society,” writes Layard, “no happier than fifty years ago. Yet every group in society is richer, and most are healthier. In this new land of opportunity, what are we not doing that we could?”

There is some brilliant cultural analysis here, as Layard picks apart what drives our culture. Individualism, status, competition, all things proven to make us unhappy, but pursued nonetheless, written into policy in the form of performance related pay or schools rankings. For this, Layard blames the unholy synergy between Adam Smith and Charles Darwin: “From Darwin’s theory of evolution many people now conclude that to survive you have to be selfish and to look after No. 1: if you don’t, you get taken for a ride. From Adam Smith they also learn, conveniently, that even if everyone is completely selfish, thing will actually turn out for the best: free contracts between independent agents will produce the greatest possible happiness.”

Under the guidance of this free market philosophy, our current society revolves around the idea of growth, of having more. As Layard points out, we are no happier now than we were fifty years ago, even though our incomes have doubled. Although being poor can be miserable, and an increase in income can lead to an increase in happiness, that ceases to be true once our basic needs are met. In the developed world, our needs were some time ago. Our continued pursuit of economic growth may now be working against our dreams of happiness.

Instead, we should unite around a new vision of the common good, using Jeremy Bentham’s principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. So, we should monitor happiness as well as, or instead of, GDP. We should ease inequality, and help the poor. Since mental illness is one of the leading causes of unhappiness, we should do everything we can to prevent it. Family and relationships are the most important factor in happiness, so flexible working, shorter working hours, and better child care are important. Community should be encouraged, so anything that brings people together should be supported or even subsidised. Advertising to children should be banned. On a personal level, avoid comparing yourself with others. Appreciate what you have. Seek to ‘do good’, rather than ‘do well’.

There’s a lot to cheer about in these recommendations, and it has been great to see politicians adopting the ideas. David Cameron has certainly been inspired. A move towards a more compassionate society, towards greater community, better work and more stable families is a vision we could all agree on, and Layard has done us a great service putting the scientific case for something that we can all feel intuitively.

However, I do have a vague sense of disquiet about the extent to which happiness can be a guiding ethos. There is surely more to a good society than the pursuit of happiness for all. Surely there are rights and wrongs – gross inequality is not wrong because it makes us unhappy, but because it is morally unjustifiable. I’m not sure that happiness is a sufficient guiding principle for a society.

The greatest happiness for the greatest number of people also leaves large loopholes. Shopping for bargain fashion items at Primark, for example, makes many people very happy. Since Primark has many more customers than it has sweatshop workers, it must cause more happiness in the world than sadness. According to a cost-benefit analysis of happiness, Primark is therefore a good thing.

Those considerations aside, ‘Happiness’ is a great book, full of insights into human nature and the consumer culture.

- from

I think using Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution here is wrong. It has nothing to do with making us unhappy. We dont have any physical advantage in our body to survive. Its our developed brain which provides cooperation between individuals gave us evolutionary advantage. All living things except human, can cooperate within their group only in a selfish manner. But humans are not like that. Using Darvin for expoitation of others is an economist agenda. They are short sighted. They care only the economic growth and their upward going graphs. They are the real problem in the society.

They make rules that never allows sharing. copyright laws, patents etc. Reject those idea. Use Free Softwares. Gnu.org

The land is ours

In 1649, Gerrard Winstanley led one of the UK’s most notable political protests, when his group of forty ‘diggers’ took up residence on St George’s Hill, near Weybridge. They planted vegetables, erected their own homes, and invited anyone to come to join them, promising to ‘work in righteousness and lay the foundation of making the earth a common treasury for all.’

Winstanley believed that oppressive social structures kept people in poverty. If access to land was restored, people would form communes and look after themselves in a happy and democratic anarchy. Nobody would work for the oppressive upper classes if they had their own land to farm, and social hierarchies would crumble.

Needless to say, the local authorities were scandalised and called the army. When the army decided not to move them on, they resorted to intimidation. There were beatings and arson attacks, crops were trampled, and eventually Winstanley was hauled into the courts and the camp disbanded. The occupation lasted from April to August, and after similarly unsuccesful projects in other parts of the country, the diggers finally abandoned their efforts in 1651.

Despite their lack of success, the diggers movement was profoundly influential. It inspired the American revolutionaries, pioneered many of the principles of communism, and is often cited as the birth of ‘direct action’ protest in Britain.

350 years on, the diggers’ cause is still unresolved. Land ownership in the UK is a subject we rarely talk about, but it remains a deeply rooted inequality, stretching right back to old class structures. 70% of the UK is owned by just 1% of the population, with big landowners including the queen, the military, and many duchies and inherited estates. The Duke of Westminster owns my office in London, part of estates that total 140,000 acres. Two thirds of Britain is owned by just 6,000 landowners. Houses and land remain hugely expensive and beyond the grasp of many people, while vast estates remain unused and in private hands. Because the monarchy and the government are among those landowners, and many more of them sit in the House of Lords, reform is not on the cards any time soon.

Fortunately, the legacy of the diggers lives on. Today the radical protest collective The Land is Ours are due to move onto some disused land near Hammersmith. They will pitch tents and dig composting toilets, and start building themselves an eco-village. Raised beds will be assembled and the former industrial land turned into a productive growing space. Volunteers will head out to meet local residents and tell them what is happening, bringing the community into the project.

The last occupation of this type was in 1996, when 500 activists occupied a site on the banks of the Thames and made themselves homes and permaculture gardens. They lived there for five months until the landowners, Guiness, evicted them with the help of the riot police.

Who knows how long this particular protest will last, perhaps the summer. Whether or not it survives, it’s a bold and subversive statement, and may highlight the neglected issue of land reform once again.

- from makewealthhistory

James Galbraith on bailout

The crucial question is, on what terms does the Treasury plan to guarantee or to repurchase or to otherwise deal with the bad assets that the banks have? These assets are mortgage-backed securities. They are securities derived from subprime loans that were made in an atmosphere of regulatory laxness and complicity and fraud, basically, during the Bush administration, which came to take over the system of housing finance and to infect it with assets which nobody trusts, which nobody can value. And nobody really knows what’s in the files, what’s on the loan tapes of those—that underlie those securities. So the question that need to ask is, before we issue a public guarantee, does the Treasury of the United States plan to conduct a meticulous audit of the assets that underlie the securities that they’re expecting to take off the banks’ books, so that the taxpayer, can have an idea of what, if anything, these securities are worth?

And the problem is that when the little bit of checking that has been done appears to reveal that a very large fraction of these securities contain, on the face of it, misrepresentation or fraud in the files. And so, we are looking at an asset which nobody, no outside investor doing due diligence on behalf of a client for whom they have some responsibility, would touch. And that is the issue. That’s the problem.

If that is indeed the case, then it’s fair to conclude that the large banks, which the Treasury is trying very hard to protect, cannot in fact be protected, that they are in fact insolvent, and that the proper approach for dealing with them is for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to move in and take the steps that the FDIC normally takes when dealing with insolvent banks.

And the sooner that you get to that and the sooner that you take these steps, which every administration, including the Bush administration, actually took in certain cases—replacing the management, making the risk capital take the first loss, reorganizing the institution, guaranteeing the deposits so that there isn’t a run, reopening the bank under new management so that it can begin to function again as it should have all along as a normal bank—the sooner you get to that, the more quickly you’ll work through the crisis.

The more you delay and the more you try to essentially prop up an institution whose books have already been poisoned, in effect, by this—the practices of the past few years, the longer it will take before the credit markets begin to function again. The functioning of the credit markets is absolutely essential to the success of the larger package, of the stimulus package and everything else, in beginning to revive the economy.

This really is not a political issue. This is an issue which should be determined after you have had—made an evaluation of the solvency of the institution, of whether its assets are sufficient to cover its liabilities. That’s a technical determination.

The proper authority for making that is neither Timothy Geithner nor David Axelrod; it’s Sheila Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. She has the authority, and she should be the one who’s making that determination, again, not on political grounds, not on whether the public is angry, as it justifiably is, over the compensation packages these banks have been paying to themselves, but whether the banks themselves are viable as—whether they’re meeting their capital requirements, whether they in fact have assets on their books sufficient, to keep them solvent. And if that’s not the case, there’s a clear chain of responsibility, and it’s not a political decision. It’s a technical decision. It’s a banking regulation decision that needs to be taken.

When you’re dealing with a bank which is essentially solvent, then you can make these judgments. But when you’re dealing with a bank which has already basically rendered itself insolvent by virtue of its complicity—it’s basically seeking for easy money, for big profits, out of mortgage originations and underwriting fees in the last part of this decade—then you’re dealing with a bank which is already underwater. The risk capital is already worth nothing. It’s being held up only by the expectation of a federal bailout.

The problem with leaving the management in place is that you cannot rely on the existing management to give you a full and fair accounting of what is in the books of the bank and what the practices of the bank are. That is why you need to bring in a new team. You need to bring in a team which is nominated by the FDIC, which has as its first objective coming clean, going through the books of the bank and separating the good assets from the bad assets, the assets which are—which have a reasonable chance of continuing to earn income from the assets which need to be written down or written off. Then you can make an assessment of just how big the losses are and what has to be done, whether the bank itself should be closed, which is sometimes the case; whether it can find a merger partner, which is sometimes the case; or whether what you do is reorganize it, isolate the bad assets from the good assets and relaunch the good assets as part of a new bank. One thing or another has to be done. And when it’s done, you can begin to basically grow the economy on the basis of these new newly reconstructed credit institutions.

But so long as you’re dealing with the old management and so long as you’re dealing with the old practices and so long as you don’t have a clean audit of the books, the chances are that the bank is going to behave in ways which are not constructive, which do not contribute to the growth of the economy, and which leave all kinds of suspicions present in the system about the integrity of the institution and of the regulatory process. And that’s the problem the Treasury Department seems to be determined not to face.

And so long as it doesn’t face it, we’re not going to get out of this, and the Treasury Department is not contributing constructively to the success of the recovery plan, which the Congress is about to enact. And that will mean that the recovery plan itself will be, sort of after the fact, too small to deal the problem of unemployment, which is just growing at the rate of a half a million jobs a month. That’s the dilemma that we’re in.

The term “nationalizing banks”, is a political misleading term. I learned a few months ago that in 1982, at the time of the Latin American debt crisis, the Reagan administration’s FDIC had a contingency plan to nationalize the major banks in the case that a major Latin American country—let’s say Mexico or Argentina or Brazil—had defaulted outright on its debt. This was not something that administration would have wanted to do. In the end, they didn’t have to do it. But they had a plan to do it, if it was necessary because the banks were rendered insolvent by the running to ruin of a major class of assets.

We have a major class of assets—that is to say, all of these subprime mortgage-backed securities—which have run to ruin. They should never have been issued in the first place. They are very, very highly likely to default. They were issued on terms which makes them basically unmarketable, because there is not adequate loan documentation. And when there is loan documentation, that documentation evidently indicates that the loans are likely to go bad, so that nobody outside will buy them. That’s a problem that exists in the banking system, and the regulators simply have to deal with it.

We’re not in 1945 in Attlee’s Britain, where we are taking the commanding heights of their economy or anything like that. We are doing what regulators always have to do, in conservative and liberal administrations, when faced with major intractable insolvencies in the financial system. If you don’t deal with that, the problem of fraud and loss just gets worse. And the losses that are incurred after insolvency are losses that fall on the taxpayer, because they come against deposits that are insured. So, one way or another, until we deal with this, the taxpayers’ liability just gets bigger and bigger.

Whether it was the New Deal or World War II that ended the Depression?

First of all, there is a grave understatement in those arguments about what the New Deal actually did. And that understatement is typically because the unemployment figures that many people are accustomed to using for the 1930s don’t count people who actually worked for the New Deal. This is Michael Steele’s distinction between jobs and work. But people who were building the Lincoln Tunnel or the Triborough Bridge or the aircraft carrier Yorktown are counted as work relief and not as employed, and there were many millions of those. And when you put them into the figures, you find that the New Deal actually reduced unemployment from 25 percent in 1933 to about—to less than ten percent in 1936. It went up again in ’37 and then came back down again to about ten percent before the war. So, a major, major improvement in unemployment did occur under the New Deal.

It is true that the war made a major transformation in the economy. It drove unemployment to zero. But it also did something else. It gave the American family, the American household, a financial cushion, which was the war bonds that people accumulated during the war that formed the basis for the financial prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s. And that is what made the—made it possible for the private financial system, which collapsed in 1929, to recover in the 1950s and ’60s. And I think that point is very important, because what it shows you is that when the financial system goes down, as it seems to have gone down in the last couple of years, recovery requires a long time. And the precondition for recovery is not fixing the banks; it’s fixing the balance sheets of the households, the creditworthiness of the American family.

And the problem that we have here is the fall in housing prices, people who have mortgages that are worth much more than their houses, which is rendering the entire borrowing base of the American economy basically insolvent. And it will lead to make it extremely difficult for the mechanisms of credit to work again, until you’ve done enough basically to stabilize housing, to stabilize jobs and incomes, and then make it possible for banks—for any reasonable bank, even a solvent bank—to look at its borrowers and say, “Gee, this is a good credit risk,” and for that matter, for the borrowers themselves to feel, “Gee, this is a good time to come in and borrow and get that new car.” That’s the issue that they’re going to face. It’s going to take a long time and major change. And that’s why I say the whole package here is probably not adequate, but it’s a good—that said, what Roosevelt did in ’33 wasn’t adequate either. It was simply a start. And that’s where we are.

The Predator State refers to the takeover of state power by private interests masquerading behind conservative principle and basically acting for private clients and private profit. That was the Bush administration in a nutshell. The title goes back to Veblen and a bit to my father’s New Industrial State, and it’s an attempt to capture in two words a phenomenon that I think really has transformed our economy, much for the worse in the last several decades.

Professor James Galbraith talking with Amy Goodman.

James Galbraith is economist, a professor of public affairs and government at the University of Texas, Austin. His most recent book, The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too.

- from democracynow

Carbon intensity of Shell

a ground-breaking study by Oil Change and other NGO’s calculated that Shell was the world’s most carbon intensive oil company, per barrel of oil equivalent to be produced. The main reason for this is its massive expansion into Canada’s climate intensive dirty oil sands.

The report looked at the carbon intensity of the total resources of the four largest international oil companies – Shell, BP, Exxon and Chevron – and found that Shell was the worst.

Even this exercise was difficult due to the lack of reporting on data by the companies. Now a new analysis of climate risk disclosure by fossil fuel companies published by Ceres and the Environmental Defence Fund backs up this analysis. It paints a fascinating picture of the lack of information given by companies to investors about the climate risk of their operations. Shell gets heavily criticised, although is no means the worst.

The report noted that “Royal Dutch Shell’s disclosure of the significant climate risks it faces from its investments, particularly those in non-conventional fuels, did not provide the range of information needed by investors as outlined in the Global Framework.”

The report concludes with the Oil Change briefing paper that both Shell’s tar sands and oil shale investments are problematic. “Because of the substantial greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands and their contribution to global warming, their development presents a considerable climate risk to Shell and its shareholders.”

CERES and EDF note that Shell states, “As easy-to-access oil gets rarer, unconventional resources such as Canada’s oil sands will become increasingly important sources of energy.”

They argue that “This disclosure did not fully address the concern that tar sands development will release extensive quantities of greenhouse gases. Shell did disclose information on how it plans to make oil sands mining compatible with Shell’s emissions reductions efforts … Shell’s disclosure of information on unconventional fuels failed to provide clear, comprehensive information that investors can use to judge Shell’s exposure to and management of climate risks.”

Essentially Shell is trying to square a circle with oil sands – it knows that its business survival depends on reducing carbon emissions. But its business strategy is to exploit tar sands that have a much higher carbon intensity and hence higher emissions. So it knows it has to lower emissions, but has chosen to exploit a technology with high emissions. If it doesn’t make sense to you it doesn’t make much sense to Shell either, but still the company is doing it, with the panacea that CCS technology will somehow sort the problem out. If CCS does not work, or governments introduce tight climate standards, Shell is up the proverbial creek, with its whole business strategy in ruins.

Its not just tar sands Shell has a problem with either. The report notes “Shell is also actively engaged in securing government leases in the Western U.S. for development of oil shale, another unconventional oil resource. Oil shale development shares tar sands’ high greenhouse gas intensity, and also requires significant water resources. In its 10-K annual filing, Shell did not address how its oil shale investment fits within plans to mitigate global warming pollution.”

The climate stakes are just too high for Shell to “not address” these issues. But even if we think Shell is bad, its not the worst. Although it criticised Shell, the report said that “the company had the best climate risk disclosure” of all the oil and gas companies, “indicating the low level of disclosure in this sector.”

This is a situation that should not be allowed to continue by the regulatory authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.

- from priceofoil

The CRU hack

As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution). As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.

Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment. Some of them involve people here (and the archive includes the first RealClimate email we ever sent out to colleagues) and include discussions we’ve had with the CRU folk on topics related to the surface temperature record and some paleo-related issues, mainly to ensure that posting were accurate.

Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.

No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.

The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.

There are of course lessons to be learned. Clearly no-one would have gone to this trouble if the academic object of study was the mating habits of European butterflies. That community’s internal discussions are probably safe from the public eye. But it is important to remember that emails do seem to exist forever, and that there is always a chance that they will be inadvertently released. Most people do not act as if this is true, but they probably should.

It is tempting to point fingers and declare that people should not have been so open with their thoughts, but who amongst us would really be happy to have all of their email made public?

Let he who is without PIN cast the the first stone.

Update: The official UEA statement is as follows:

“We are aware that information from a server used for research information
in one area of the university has been made available on public websites,”
the spokesman stated.

“Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm
that all of this material is genuine.”

“This information has been obtained and published without our permission
and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from
operation.”

“We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved
the police in this enquiry.”

- from realclimate

Danger of Soot Particles in the Air

A new appraisal of existing studies documenting the links between tiny soot particles and premature death from cardiovascular ailments shows that mortality rates among people exposed to the particles are twice as high as previously thought.

Dan Greenbaum, the president of the nonprofit Health Effects Institute, which is releasing the analysis on Wednesday, said that the areas covered in the study included 116 American cities, with the highest levels of soot particles found in areas including the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles and the Central Valley of California; Birmingham, Ala.; Atlanta; the Ohio River Valley; and Pittsburgh.

The review found that the risk of having a condition that is a precursor to deadly heart attacks for people living in soot-laden areas goes up by 24 percent rather than 12 percent, as particle concentrations increase.

A variety of sources produce fine particles, and they include diesel engines, automobile tires, coal-fired power plants and oil refineries.

The link between fine particles, the diameter of which is smaller than a 30th of a human hair, and cardiopulmonary disease has been established for two decades, and the E.P.A. has regulated such emissions since 1997. In 2006, despite mounting evidence that the particles were deadlier than first thought, the agency declined to lower chronic exposure limits.

- from nytimes

U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide

Since the mid-1800s, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary human-caused greenhouse gas, accounted for 29% of the global total. Those 328,000 million metric tons of cumulative emissions are the most of any country and more than three times the amount emitted by China over the same period (93,000 MtCO2), according to data from data from the World Resources Institute.

Cumulative emissions are responsible for the high levels of CO2 concentrations that are destroying the climate, which means the moral responsibility rests with Americans to show leadership on emissions reductions.

Here are some more quotable factoids from their report:

• Historically, no nation has emitted more global warming pollution than the United States. From 1960-2005, the U.S. emitted 213,608 MtCO2, 26% of total global emissions. The next biggest polluter, China, emitted 88,643 MtCO2 over the same time frame, 10.7% of global emissions.
• The U.S. also exceeded almost every other nation in per capita emissions. Per capita, the U.S. emitted 720 tons of CO2 per person per year from 1960-2005. This is more than ten times China’s per capita emissions (68 tons of CO2) during the same period, and ninety times the per capita emissions of Kenya (7.7 tCO2). Even considered individually, the 50 U.S. states are among the nations that are the largest emitters of carbon dioxide on earth.
• Even considered individually, the 50 U.S. states are among the nation that are the largest emitters of carbon dioxide on Earth.
• The average U.S. state emitted 4,449 MtCO2 from 1960-2005, which would rank 30th among the nations of the world. The combined historic emissions of just seven states—Texas, California, Illinois, New York, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Ohio—totalled 96,517 MtCO2, more than any other country in the world, including China (92,950).
• If Texas were its own country, it would rank sixth out of 184 countries in the world in total emissions, trailing just China, Russia, Germnay, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

Time for Americans to lead on emissions reductions.

- from climateprogress

Peterborough Lift Lock

It took 84 years to finish the Trent-Severn waterway that connects Lake Ontario to Lake Huron; it may have made sense in 1833 when it was started but by its completion the railways were dominant, the locks were too small and the trip took too long. The monster infrastructure project never served its commercial purpose and its 44 locks, 39 swing bridges and 160 dams now support little more than pleasure boats. But it is a marvel of Victorian engineering, and perhaps the most remarkable engineering of the whole thing is the Peterborough Lift Lock. It is the highest hydraulic boat lift in the world at 65 feet. (a boat lift in Belgium is higher and bigger but works on a different principle)

But the amazing thing is that it was designed to operate entirely without electricity, just on water power.

Because of Archimedes Principle, adding the boat displaces the equivalent weight in water, so the mechanism doesn’t have to deal with any more weight. Then it drops, entirely powered by gravity.

Spectacular engineering, part of a system that enables one to travel 240 miles and climb 840 feet, entirely powered by water. It still runs perfectly 110 years later. That is the way to design a transportation system. A working infrastructure that runs on waterpower ; perhaps it is too soon to call it a commercial failure.

- from treehugger

Sahara connection of hurricane activity

Several studies have shown that hurricane activity is generally reduced during years when there is a thick aerosol haze over the subtropical Atlantic. The haze is comprised mainly of soil particles, stripped by wind erosion from the barren ground over the Sahara and Sahel. These particles are lifted into the atmosphere and carried by the Trade winds as far as the Caribbean and Amazon basin. Plumes of dust streaming off the African coast are easily recognized in satellite imagery, and were even described by Charles Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle.

The amount of dust crossing the Atlantic has been measured at Barbados since the mid 1960s (aptly by Prospero and colleagues). These measurements show a threefold increase in dust between the original part of the record and the mid 1980s at the peak of the Sahel drought, when the region was unusually vulnerable to wind erosion. African dust crosses the tropical Atlantic within the Saharan Air Layer (SAL), an elevated duct of air between about 2 and 5 km in altitude. Because of its continental origin, this air is not only dusty but extremely dry.

There is an observed anti-correlation between dustiness and tropical cyclone days in the Atlantic (Evan et al, 2006). This anti-correlation might indicate the a direct influence of dust on hurricanes, or a connection between the dry air the dust resides in and hurricanes, or might even be related to a much larger scale pattern which controls both hurricanes and dustiness. If there is a connection, one hypothesis is that entrainment of dry SAL air rapidly strangles a developing cyclone because of the low humidity that accompanies the dusty air, while the dust itself has no direct effect. An alternative hypothesis is that the reduction in sunlight beneath the dust layer cools the ocean surface, whose temperature is a well-known predictor of hurricane activity (at least at the basin scale). Thus it is plausible that decadal variations in dustiness could contribute to decadal variations in hurricane activity, but how big might such an effect be?

A recent article in Science by Evan et al. (2009) is one of the few attempts to quantify the contribution of both dust and volcanic aerosols to the observed warming within the tropical Atlantic. The authors infer the amount of total aerosol using the Advanced Very High-Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) satellite instrument and screen for locations where dust is present (they note that other aerosols might be mixed with the dust, but neglect this overlap). They also assume that dust has no effect where there are clouds. However, where the SAL extends over low marine clouds, the dust (since it is darker than cloud) might have an opposing effect to that seen in clear sky regions, although this is hard to quantify. They then calculate the contribution by dust and volcanic aerosols to observed changes in sea surface temperature (SST) during the satellite record between 1982 and 2007. During this period, the aerosol amount varied with dust export from Africa, but also from major eruptions by two volcanoes (El Chichon in 1982 and Pinatubo in 1991), each of which left a reflective layer of sulfate droplets in the lower stratosphere for a couple of years.

Evan et al. calculate that between 1982 and 2007 the ocean surface warmed by 0.25°C/decade in the main region of Atlantic hurricane genesis (15-­65°W and 0­-30°N). For comparison, they calculate a warming trend of 0.18°C/decade due to a reduction of dust and volcanic aerosols. That decreasing aerosols account for two-thirds of the observed warming might suggest that other factors like the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations (combined with anthropogenic aerosol changes) made a relatively modest net contribution to the warming (and by implication to observed trends in hurricane activity). For the natural aerosols, they calculate that stratospheric aerosols made roughly twice the contribution of dust over this period.

So how did they do this calculation? Firstly, they use a relatively simple model to relate SST to the reduction in net radiation into the ocean surface, prior to any climatic response. This forcing is calculated using the total aerosol amount inferred from the AVHRR data. Variations in SST due to variations in heat transport by ocean currents or diffusion into the thermocline are neglected while contributions by changes in evaporation, turbulent transfer, and surface radiation are estimated as being proportional to the anomalous air-sea temperature difference. Cooling of the ocean by aerosols must therefore be offset by a reduction in heat lost from the ocean to the atmosphere.

They note a key simplification is their neglect of any change to the surface air temperature when calculating anomalous air-sea temperature difference. This would require an atmospheric model along with a consideration of aerosol forcing at the top of the atmosphere (TOA). There is a strong relationship between surface air temperature and TOA forcing (at least at large spatial scales). As a consequence, the ocean-atmosphere flux depends upon not only forcing at the surface but the forcing at the TOA. By neglecting the effect of the changes in surface air temperature upon SST, Evan et al. may be underestimating the impact of the aerosols on their calculated trend. This is especially important for volcanic aerosols, whose TOA forcing is large and comparable to the surface forcing, as opposed to absorbing aerosols like dust where the surface forcing is larger than at TOA. However, balancing this effect is the neglect of heat diffusion into the thermocline which would reduce the ocean cooling. It is not a priori obvious which effect is more important, especially since the atmosphere can balance the forcing by adjusting lateral heat transport, which would also influence the anomalous surface air temperature.

Another way to test the importance of atmospheric changes would be to calculate both the TOA and surface forcing using the satellite measurements, and then impose this transient forcing in a general circulation model that calculates both the atmosphere and ocean response. That too would have problems, given that the models are not perfect, but it would be a useful check on the order of magnitude of the inferred effects. Indeed, assessments of the causes of tropical Atlantic trends using the IPCC AR4 models (Santer et al, 2006) come up with a much larger component due to anthropogenic effects, though those models did not include dust forcing changes.

Using their methodology, Evan et al. find that a decline in total aerosols contributed around two-thirds of the observed warming in NH tropical Atlantic SST between 1982 and 2007. Most of this is due to the two major volcanic eruptions (El Chichon and Pinatubo) that cooled the ocean early on in this period (and so lead to a warming once they were no longer present). However, the attributed aerosol trend would have been smaller had the satellite record extended a decade earlier. The estimated contribution of dust changes to the observed trend is small, roughly one-quarter of the total trend.

Whatever its impact upon SST, dust might impact other factors contributing to cyclone intensity (Emanuel, 1995), in particular, the reduction of the air-sea heat flux and temperatures in the upper troposphere. Unfortunately, global models don’t quite have the resolution to explicitly calculate all these effects.

Ultimately, the effect of dust upon hurricanes is important because, like ocean temperatures, African dust export is expected to change during the 21st century in response to global warming and changes in African rainfall. One study shows that dust production is expected to decrease (Mahowald and Luo, 2003), though given the diversity of Sahel rainfall projections and the preliminary state of vegetation models, this is not necessarily going to be a universal response.

The calculation by Evan et al. is an interesting first step to quantifying the effect of dust changes on SST, but there plenty of issues left to investigate.

- from realclimate

Why is nuclear so unreliable

Nuclear reactors are a massively complex way of boiling water. That’s all they do – boil water to create steam to turn turbines that generate electricity. They are huge, complicated kettles.

This complexity means that reactors can be temperamental beasts. The smallest of faults can stop electricity generation or prevent reactors running at full power. The history of nuclear energy is littered with examples and the every day news shows that things are not getting better.

Look at the technical problems Japan’s Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant. Look at the country’s supposedly earthquake-proof Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, closed for nearly two years by an earthquake and a series of fires. Technical problems at the THORP reprocessing plant in the UK that may close it for years. South Africa’s Koeberg nuclear power station shut down after ‘an unspecified technical fault’. The US’s Prairie Island nuclear plant Unit 1 is offline after an electrical fault its coolant system. ‘Most of the UK’s reactors have performance figures in the lowest 25% of the world league table, with only two in the top 50%’. We could go on all day.

Can we expect an improved performance from the next generation of nuclear reactors? Judging by the long list of problems and setbacks seen at the construction sites of the new EPR reactors at like Olkiluoto and Flamanville, we wouldn’t bet on it.
Critics of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind say that they are unreliable. And yet these sources are built on tried, tested and above all, simple (meaning easily mass-produced and repairable) technologies. The history of nuclear energy shows its unreliability and shortcomings all too clearly.

- from greenpeace

Give privacy to Maharashtrians

You must be knowing that MNS and Raj Thackeray’s rebellion against a hindi speaking MLA in the Maharashtra legislative Assembly. This is not a new thing in Maharashtra. Its happening for the last 50 years. Previously it was against communist trade unions then south indians then muslims and now its against noth indians. To keep Thackeray family in power somebody has to suffer.

They are right. Why all these indians are going to Mumbai?

Mumbai is an integral part of Maharashtra. And these Maharashtrians want privacy from the rest of india. Why dont you provide that. Maharashtra is a state in India. As a citizen of India we have to help our fellow citizens to achieve their dreams.

How can we do that?

You know these alien people are going to Maharashtra not for pleasure. They are going there for work. Why? Because there are lot of industries. People want work. They also want to escape from social injustices. So they become immigrant. (Nobody knows who you are)

If you look any product you use, you can see that most of them is manufactured in Mumbai. Immigrants work in these industries and make goods and services for the rest of the country. They actually built Mumbai.

Maharashtrians dont like this. Because its destroying their privacy. So we have to reduce sending our people there. But then who will make these goods and services? Why cant we make these in our own state? or our own district? or our own village? Long back MK Gandhi had a dream. Gram swaraj. Self-sufficient village. Can we restore that? At least self sufficient state? Also we have provide social justice to the backward people.

If we can do that then there will not be no need of sending people to Mumbai. Maharashtrians will get their privacy.

• For that you have to stop buying goods and services produced in Mumbai/Maharashtra.
• Do not pay money to Bollywood movies. If you really want to see it copy it or watch it on TV. (But dont buy any ad.) After all this is entertainment. Make it free for the society.
• Buy products which are locally produced. This will reduce greenhouse gas emission because of less transportation.
• If you cannot find a particular product/service then buy same kind of product from a neighbouring state.
• Do not invest in banks which has head office in Mumbai. Invest local cooperative banks, state treasuries, SBI’s subsidiaries in your state. (Oppose merging of SBI’s subsidiaries)
• Do not invest BSE/NSE

These will empower your local economy. Say No to big cities.

Restore mahatma’s dream of Gram Swaraj and lets give privacy to Maharashtrians.

War and Social Justice

Why is all the political rhetoric limited? Why is the set of solutions given to social and economic issues so cramped and so short of what is needed, so short of what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights demands? And, yes, Obama, who obviously is more attuned to the needs of people than his opponent, Obama, who is more far-sighted, more thoughtful, more imaginative, why has he been limited in what he is saying? Why hasn’t he come out for what is called a single-payer system in healthcare?

You all know what the single-payer system is. It’s a sort of awkward term for it, maybe. It doesn’t explain what it means. But a single-payer health system means—well, it will be sort of run like Social Security. It’ll be a government system. It won’t depend on intermediaries, on middle people, on insurance companies. You won’t have to fill out forms and pay, and figure out whether you have a preexisting medical condition. You won’t have to go through that rigamarole, that rigamarole which has kept 40 million people out of having health insurance. No, something happens, you just go to a doctor, you go to a hospital, you’re taken care of, period. The government will pay for it. Yeah, the government will pay for it. That’s what governments are for.

Governments, they do that for the military. Did you know that? That’s what the military has. The military has free insurance. I was once in the military. I got pneumonia, which is easier to get in the military. I got pneumonia. I didn’t have to fool around with deciding what health plan I’m in. No, I was totally taken care of. I didn’t have to think about money. there are a million members of the armed forces who have that. But when you ask that the government do this for everybody else, they cry, “That’s socialism!” Well, if that’s socialism, it must mean socialism is good.

No, I was really gratified when Obama called for “Let’s tax the rich more, and let’s tax the poor and middle class less.” And they said, “That’s socialism.” And I thought, “Whoa! I’m happy to hear that. Finally, socialism is getting a good name.” Socialism has been given bad names, Stalin and all those socialists, so-called socialists. They weren’t really socialist, but, they called themselves socialist. But they weren’t really. And so, socialism got a bad name. It used to have a really good name. Here in the United States, the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, socialism had a good name. Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. There were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored.

but Obama, with all of his, well, good will, intelligence, all those qualities that he has, and so on—and, you feel that he has a certain instinct for people in trouble. But still, he wouldn’t come out for a single-payer health system, that is, for what I would call health security, to go along with Social Security, wouldn’t come out for that; wouldn’t come out for the government creating jobs for millions of people, because that’s what really is needed now. When people are—the newspapers this morning report highest unemployment in decades, right? The government needs to create jobs. Private enterprise is not going to create jobs. Private enterprise fails, the so-called free market system fails, fails again and again. When the Depression hit in the 1930s, Roosevelt and the New Deal created jobs for millions of people. And, oh, there were people on the, out there on the fringe who yelled “Socialism!” Didn’t matter. People needed it. If people need something badly, and somebody does something for them, you can throw all the names you want at them, it won’t matter, you see? But that was needed in this campaign. Yes.

Instead of Obama and McCain joining together—I know some of you may be annoyed that I’m being critical of Obama, but that’s my job. I like him. I’m for him. I want him to do well. I’m happy he won. I’m delighted he won. But I’m a citizen. I have to speak my mind. OK? Yeah. And, but when I saw Obama and McCain sort of both together supporting the $700 billion bailout, I thought, “Uh-oh. No, no. Please don’t do that. Please, Obama, step aside from that. Do what—I’m sure something in your instincts must tell you that there’s something wrong with giving $700 billion to the same financial institutions which ruined us, which got us into this mess, something wrong with that, you see.” And it’s not even politically viable. That is, you can’t even say, “Oh, I’m doing it because people will then vote for me.” No. It was very obvious when the $700 billion bailout was announced that the majority of people in the country were opposed to it. Instinctively, they said, “Something is wrong with this. Why give it to them? We need it.”

That’s when the government, Obama should have been saying, “No, let’s take that $700 billion, let’s give it to people who can’t pay their mortgages. Let’s create jobs.” Instead of pouring $700 billion into the top and hoping that it will trickle down to the bottom, no, go right to the bottom, where people need it and get—so, yes, that was a disappointment. So, yeah, I’m trying to indicate what we’ll have to do now and to fulfill what Obama himself has promised: change, real change. You can’t have—you can say “change,” but if you keep doing the old policies, it’s not change, right?

So what stands in the way of Obama and the Democratic Party, and what stands in the way of them really going all out for a social and economic program that will fulfill the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Well, I can think of two things that stand in the way. Maybe there are more, but I can only think of two things at a time. And, well, one of them is simply the great, powerful economic interests that don’t want real economic change. Really, they don’t. The powerful—I mean, you take in healthcare, there are powerful interests involved in the present healthcare system. People are making lots of money from the healthcare system as it is, making so much money, and that’s why the costs of the healthcare system in the United States are double what the healthcare costs are—the percentage, of money devoted to healthcare—percentage is double, administrative costs in the United States, compared to countries that have the single-payer system, because there are people there who are siphoning off this money, who are making money. They’re health plans. They’re insurance companies. They’re health executives and CEOs, so that there are—yeah, there are interests, economic interests that are in the way of real economic change.

And Obama so far has not challenged those economic interests. Roosevelt did challenge those economic interests, boldly, right frontally. He called them economic royalists. He wasn’t worried that people would say, “Oh, you’re appealing to class conflict,” the kind of thing they pull out all the time, as if there isn’t, hasn’t always been class conflict, just something new. Class conflict. “You’re creating class conflict. We’ve never had class conflict. We’ve always all been one happy family.” no. And so, yeah, there are these interests standing in the way, and, unfortunately, the Democratic Party is tied to many of those interests. Democratic Party is, tied to a lot of corporate interests. I mean, look at the people on Obama’s—the people who are on Obama’s economics team, and they’re Goldman Sachs people, and they’re former, people like that, you know? That’s not—they don’t represent change. They represent the old-style Democratic stay-put leadership that’s not good.

the other factor that stands in the way of a real bold economic and social program is the war. The war, the thing that has, a $600 billion military budget. Now, how can you call for the government to take over the healthcare system? How can you call for the government to give jobs to millions of people? How can you do all that? How can you offer free education, free higher education, which is what we should have really? We should have free higher education. Or how can you double teachers’ salaries? How can you do all these things, which will do away with poverty in the United States? It all costs money.

And so, where’s that money going to come from? Well, it can come from two sources. One is the tax structure. And here, Obama [has] been moving in the right direction. When he talked about not giving the rich tax breaks and giving tax breaks to the poor—in the right direction, but not far enough, because the top one percent of—the richest one percent of the country has gained several trillions of dollars in the last twenty, thirty years as a result of the tax system, which has favored them. And, you have a tax system where 200 of the richest corporations pay no taxes. You know that? You can’t do that. You don’t have their accountants. You don’t have their legal teams, and so on and so forth. You don’t have their loopholes.

The war, $600 billion, we need that. We need that money. But in order to say that, in order to say, “Well, one, we’re going to increase taxes on the super rich,” much more than Obama has proposed—and believe me, it won’t make those people poor. They’ll still be rich. They just won’t be super rich. I don’t care if there’s some rich people around. But, no, we don’t need super rich, not when that money is needed to take care of little kids in pre-school, and there’s no money for pre-school. No, we need a radical change in the tax structure, which will immediately free huge amounts of money to do the things that need to be done, and then we have to get the money from the military budget. Well, how do you get money from the military budget? Don’t we need $600 billion for a military budget? Don’t we have to fight two wars? No. We don’t have to fight any wars.

And this is where Obama and the Democratic Party have been hesitant, to talk about. But we’re not hesitant to talk about it. The citizens should not be hesitant to talk about it. If the citizens are hesitant to talk about it, they would just reinforce the Democratic leadership and Obama in their hesitations. No, we have to speak what we believe is the truth. I think the truth is we should not be at war. We should not be at war at all. I mean, these wars are absurd. They’re horrible also. They’re horrible, and they’re absurd. from a human, human point of view, they’re horrible. the deaths and the mangled limbs and the blindness and the three million people in Iraq losing their homes, having to leave their homes, three million people—imagine?—having to look elsewhere to live because of our occupation, because of our war for democracy, our war for liberty, our war for whatever it is we’re supposed to be fighting for.

No, we don’t need—we need a president who will say—yeah, I’m giving advice to Obama. I know he’s listening. But, if enough people speak up, he will listen, right? If enough people speak up, he will listen. there’s much more of a chance of him listening, right, than those other people. They’re not listening. They wouldn’t listen. Obama could possibly listen, if we, all of us—and the thing to say is, we have to change our whole attitude as a nation towards war, militarism, violence. We have to declare that we are not going to engage in aggressive wars. We are going to renounce the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. “Oh, we have to go to”, “We have to go to war on this little pitiful country, because this little pitiful country might someday”—do what? Attack us? I mean, Iraq might attack us? “Well, they’re developing a nuclear weapon”—one, which they may have in five or ten years. That’s what all the experts said, even the experts on the government side. they may develop one nuclear weapon in five—wow! The United States has 10,000 nuclear weapons. Nobody says, “How about us?”. you know all about that. Weapons of mass destruct, etc., etc. No reason for us to wage aggressive wars. We have to renounce war as an instrument of foreign policy.

A hundred different countries, we have military bases. That doesn’t look like a peace-loving country. And besides—I mean, first of all, of course, it’s very expensive. We save a lot of money. Do we really need those—what do we need those bases for? I can’t figure out what we need those bases for. we have to give that up, and we have to declare ourselves a peaceful nation. We will no longer be a military superpower. “Oh, that’s terrible!” There are people who think we must be a military superpower. We don’t have to be a military superpower. We don’t have to be a military power at all, you see? We can be a humanitarian superpower. We can—yeah. We’ll still be powerful. We’ll still be rich. But we can use that power and that wealth to help people all over the world. I mean, instead of sending helicopters to bomb people, send helicopters when they face a hurricane or an earthquake and they desperately need helicopters. There’s a lot of money available once you seriously fundamentally change the foreign policy of the United States.

Now, Obama has been hesitant to do that. And it has something to do with a certain mindset, because it doesn’t have anything to do really with politics, that is, with more votes. I don’t think—do you think most Americans know that we have bases in a hundred countries? I’ll bet you if you took a poll and asked among the American people, “How many countries do you think we have bases in?” “No, I don’t know exactly what the answer is. What I would guess, there’d be like five, ten.” But I think most people would be surprised. In other words, there isn’t a public demanding that we have bases in a hundred countries, so there’s no political advantage to that. Well, of course, there’s economic advantage to corporations that supply those bases and build those bases and make profit from those bases.

But in order to—and I do believe that the American people would welcome a president who said, “We are not going to wage aggressive war anymore.” The American people are not war-minded people. They become war-minded when a president gets up there and creates an atmosphere of hysteria and fear, and says, “Well, we must go to war.” Then people, without thinking about it, without thinking, “Why are we bombing Afghanistan?” “Because, oh, Osama bin Laden is there.” “Uh, where?” Well, they don’t really know, so we’ll bomb the country. if we bomb the country, maybe we’ll get him. You see? Sure, in the process, thousands of Afghans will die, right? But—so, people didn’t have time to stop and think, think. But the American people are not war-minded people. They would welcome, I believe, a turn away from war. So there’s no real political advantage to that.

But it has to do with a mindset, a certain mindset that—well, that a lot of Americans have and that Obama, obviously, and the Democratic leadership, Pelosi and Harry Reid and the others, that they all still have. And when you talk about a mindset that they have, which stands in the way of the declaring against war, you’re reminded that during the campaign—I don’t know if you remember this—that at one point Obama said—and, there were many times in the campaign where he said really good things, if he had only followed up on them, you see, and if he only follows up on them now. But at one point in the campaign, he said, “It’s not just a matter of getting out of Iraq. It’s a matter of changing the mindset that got us into Iraq.” You see? That was a very important statement. Unfortunately, he has not followed through by changing his mindset, you see? He knows somewhere in—well, then he expressed it, that we have to change our mindset, but he hasn’t done it. Why? I don’t know. Is it because there are too many people around him and too many forces around him, and etc., etc., that…? But, no, that mindset is still there. So I want to talk about what that mindset is, what the elements of that mindset are.

And I have to look at my watch, not that it matters, not that I care, but, I feel conscience-stricken over keeping you here just to hear the truth.

Here are some of the elements of the mindset that stand in the way, in the way for Obama, in the way for the Democratic Party, in the way for many Americans, in the way for us. One of the elements in our mindset is the idea, somehow, that the United States is exceptional. In the world of social science, in, that discipline called social science, there’s actually a phrase for it. It’s called American exceptionalism. And what it means is the idea that the United States is unique in the world, that we are different, that we—not just different, we’re better. Right? We are better than other people. our society is better than other societies. This is a very dangerous thing to think. When you become so arrogant that you think you are better and different than other countries in the world, then that gives you a carte blanche to do nasty things. You can do nasty things, because you’re better. You’re justified in doing those things, because, yeah, you’re—we’re different. So we have to divest ourselves of the idea that, we are somehow better and, we are the “City on the Hill,” which is what the first governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, said. “We are the”—Reagan also said that. Well, Reagan said lots of things, you know that. But we are everybody looks to—no, we’re an empire, like other empires.

There was a British empire. There was a Russian empire. There was a German empire and a Japanese empire and a French and a Belgian empire, the Dutch empire and the Spanish empire. And now there’s the American empire. And our empire—and when we look at those empires, we say, “Oh, imperialism! But our empire, no.” There was one sort of scholar who wrote in the New York Times, he said, “We are an empire lite.” Lite? Tell that to the people of Iraq. Tell that to the people in Afghanistan. we are an empire lite? No, we are heavy.

all you have to do is look at our history, and you’ll see, no, our history does not show a beneficent country doing good all over the world. Our history shows expansion. Our history shows expansion. It shows us—well, yeah, it shows us moving into—doubling our territory with the Louisiana Purchase, which I remember on our school maps looked very benign. “Oh, there’s that, all that empty land, and now we have it.” It wasn’t empty! There were people living there. There were Indian tribes. Hundreds of Indian tribes were living there, you see? And if it’s going to be ours, we’ve got to get rid of them. And we did. No. And then, we instigated a war with Mexico in 1848, 1846 to 1848, and at the end of the war we take almost half of Mexico. And why? Well, we wanted that land. That’s very simple. We want things. There’s a drive of nations that have the power and the capacity to bully other nations, a tendency to expand into those—the areas that those other nations have. We see it all over the world. And the United States has done that again and again. then we expanded into the Caribbean. Then we expanded out into the Pacific with Hawaii and the Philippines, and yeah. And, of course, in the twentieth century, expanding our influence in Europe and Asia and now in the Middle East, everywhere. An expansionist country, an imperialist power.

For what? To do good things for these other people? Or is it because we coveted—when I say “we,” I don’t mean to include you and me. But I’ve gotten, they’ve gotten us so used to identifying with the government. like we say “we,” like the janitor at General Motors says “we.” No. No, the CEO of General Motors and the janitor are not “we.”

exceptionalism is one part of the mindset we have to get rid of. We have to see ourselves honestly for what we are. We’re an empire like other empires. We’re as aggressive and brutal and violent as the Belgians were in the Congo, as the British were in India, and all these other empires. Yeah, we’re just like them. We have to face it. And when you face that, you sober up a little, and then you don’t think you can just go all over the world and say, “Ah, we’re doing this for liberty and democracy,” because then, if you know your history, you know how many times that was said. “Oh, we’re going into the Philippines to bring civilization and Christianity to the Filipinos.” “We’re going to bring civilization to the Mexicans,” etc., etc. No. You’ll understand that. Yeah, that’s one element in this mindset.

And then, of course, when you say this, when you say these things, when you go back into that history, when you try to give an honest recounting of what we have been—not “we,” really—what the government, the government, has done, our government has done. The people haven’t done it. People—we’re just people. The government does these things, and then they try to include us, involve us in their criminal conspiracy. we didn’t do this. But they’re dragooning us into this.

But when you start criticizing, when you start making an honest assessment of what we have done in the world, they say you’re being unpatriotic. Well, you have to—that’s another part of the mindset you have to get rid of, because if you don’t, then you think you have to wear a flag in your lapel or you think you have to always have American flags around you, and you have to show, by your love for all this meaningless paraphernalia, that you are patriotic. Well, an honest presidential candidate would not be afraid to say, “You know, patriotism is not a matter of wearing a flag in your lapel, not a matter of this or not—patriotism is not supporting the government. Patriotism is supporting the principles that the government is supposed to stand for.” so we need to redefine these things which we have come—which have been thrown at us and which we’ve imbibed without thinking, not thinking, “Oh, what really is patriotism?” If we start really thinking about what it is, then we will reject these cries that you’re not patriotic, and we’ll say, “Patriotism is not supporting the government.” When the government does bad things, the most patriotic thing you can do is to criticize the government, because that’s the Declaration of Independence. That’s our basic democratic charter. The Declaration of Independence says governments are set up by the people to—they’re artificial creations. They’re set up to ensure certain rights, the equal right to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness. So when governments become destructive of those ends, the Declaration said, “it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish” the government. That’s our basic democratic charter. People have forgotten what it is. It’s OK to alter or abolish the government when the government violates its trust. And then you are being patriotic. I mean, the government violates its trust, the government is being unpatriotic.

so we have to think about these words and phrases that are thrown at us without giving us a time to think. And, we have to redefine these words, like “national security.” What is national security? Lawyers say, “Well, this is for national security.” Well, that takes care of it. No, it doesn’t take care of it. This national security means different things to different people. Ah, there’s some people—for some people, national security means having military bases all over the world. For other people, national security means having healthcare, having jobs. that’s security. And so, yeah, we need to sort of redefine these things.

We need to redefine “terrorism.” Otherwise, the government can throw these words at us: “Oh, we’re fighting against terrorism.” Oh, well, then I guess we have to do this. Wait a while, what do you mean by “terrorism”? Well, we sort of have an idea what terrorism means. Terrorism means that you kill innocent people for some belief that you have. Yeah, sure, blowing up on 9/11, yeah, that was terrorist. But if that’s the definition of “terrorism,” killing innocent people for some belief you have, then war is terrorism.

We have to stop thinking that solutions to problems are military solutions, that you can solve problems with violence. You can’t really. You don’t really solve problems with violence. We have to change our definitions of “heroism.” Heroism in American culture, so far, really—when people think of heroism, they think of military heroes. They think of the people whose statues are all over the country, and they think of medals and battles. And yeah, these are military heroes. And that’s why Obama goes along with that definition of military—of “hero,” by referring to John McCain, as a military hero, always feeling that he must do that. I never felt he must do that. John McCain, to my mind—and I know that this is a tough thing to accept and may make some of the people angry—John McCain was tortured and bore up under torture and was a victim of torture and imprisonment, and, it takes fortitude to that. He’s not a military hero. Before he was imprisoned, he dropped bombs on innocent people. he did what the other members of the Air Force did. They dropped bombs on peasant villages and killed a lot of innocent people. I don’t consider that heroism. So, we have to redefine. To me, the great heroes are the people who have spoken out against war. Those are the heroes.

we have to change, change our mindset. We have to understand certain things that we haven’t maybe thought about enough. I think one of the things we haven’t thought about enough—because this is basic, and this is crucial—we haven’t realized, or at least not expressed it consciously, that the government’s interests are not the same as our interests. Really. And so, when they talk about the national interest, they’re creating what Kurt Vonnegut used to call a “granfalloon.” A granfalloon was, so, a meaningless abstraction and when you put together that don’t belong together, you see a “national security”—no—and “national interest.” No, there’s no one national interest. There’s the interest of the president of the United States, and then there’s the interest of the young person he sends to war. They’re different interests, you see? There is the interest of Exxon and Halliburton, and there’s the interest of the worker, the nurse’s aide, the teacher, the factory worker. Those are different interests. Once you recognize that you and the government have different interests, that’s a very important step forward in your thinking, because if you think you have a common interest with the government, well, then it means that if the government says you must do this and you must do that, and it’s a good idea to go to war here, well, the government is looking out for my interest. No, the government is not looking out for your interest. The government has its own interests, and they’re not the interests of the people. Not just true in the United States, it’s true everywhere in the world. Governments generally do not represent the interests of their people. See? That’s why governments keep getting overthrown, because people at a certain point realize, “Hey! No, the government is not serving my interest.”

That’s also why governments lie. Why do governments lie? You must know that governments lie—not just our government; governments, in general, lie. Why do they lie? They have to lie, because their interests are different than the interests of ordinary people. If they told the truth, they would be out of office. So you have to recognize, that the difference, difference in interest.

I have to say something about war, a little more than I have said, and what I say about them, because I’ve been emphasizing the importance of renouncing war and not being a war-making nation, and because it will not be enough to get us out of Iraq. One of these days, we’ll get out of Iraq. We have to get out of Iraq. We don’t belong there. And we’re going to have to get out of there. Sooner or later, we’re going to have to get out of there. But we don’t want to have to—we don’t want to get out of Iraq and then have to get out of somewhere else. We don’t have to get out of Iraq but keep troops in Afghanistan, as unfortunately, Obama said, troops in Afghanistan. No, no more—not just Iraq. We have to get into a mindset about renouncing war, period, and which is a big step.

And my ideas about war, my thoughts about war, the sort of the conclusions that I’ve come to about war, they really come from two sources. One, from my study of history. Of course, not everybody who studies history comes to the same conclusions. But, you have to listen to various people who study history and decide what makes more sense, right? I’ve looked at various histories. I’ve concluded that my history makes more sense. And I’ve always been an objective student of these things, yes. But my—yeah, my ideas about war come from two sources. One of them is studying history, the history of wars, the history of governments, the history of empires. That history helps a lot in straightening out your thinking.

And the other is my own experience in war. I was in World War II. I was a Air Force bombardier. I dropped bombs on various cities in Europe. That doesn’t make me an expert. Lots of people were in wars, and they all come out with different opinions. Well, so all I can do is give you my opinion based on my thinking after having been in a war. I was an enthusiastic enlistee in the Air Force. I wanted to be in the war, war against fascism, the “good war,” right? But at the end of the war, as I looked around and surveyed the world and thought about what I had done and thought about—and learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and learned about Dresden and learned about Hamburg and learned things I didn’t even realize while I was bombing, because when you’re involved in a military operation, you don’t think. You just—you’re an automaton, really. You may be a well-educated and technically competent automaton, but that’s what you—you aren’t really—you’re not questioning, not questioning why. “Why are they sending me to bomb this little town? When the war is almost over, there’s no reason for dropping bombs on several thousand people.” No, you don’t think.

Well, I began to think after the war and began to think that—and I was thinking now about the good war, the best war, and I was thinking, “Oh.” And then I began to see, no, this good war is not simply good. This best of wars, no. And if that’s true of this war, imagine what is true of all the other obviously ugly wars about which you can’t even use the word “good.”

I began to realize certain things, that war corrupts everybody, corrupts everybody who engages in it. You start off, they’re the bad guys. You make an interesting psychological jump. The jump is this: since they’re the bad guys, you must be the good guys. No, they may very well be the bad guys. They may be fascists and dictators and bad, really bad guys. That doesn’t mean you’re good. And when I began to look at it that way, I realized that wars are fought by evils on both sides. one is a little more evil than the other. But even though you start in a war with sort of good intentions—we’re going to defeat fascism, we’re going to do this—you end up being corrupted, you end up being violent, you end up killing a lot of innocent people, because you’ve decided from the beginning that you’re right, and then you don’t have to ask questions anymore. That’s an interesting psychological thing that you—trick that you play. Well, you start out—you make a decision at the very beginning. The decision is: they’re wrong, I’m right. Once you have made that decision, you don’t have to think anymore. Then anything you do goes. Anything you do is OK, because you made the decision early on that they’re bad, you’re good. Then you can kill several hundred thousand people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then you can kill 100,000 people in Dresden. It doesn’t matter. You’re not thinking about it. Yeah, war corrupts everybody who engages in it.

So what else can I say about war? Lots of things. But I took out my watch presumably because I care. And I don’t. But Is, people will present you with humanitarian awards. Oh, this is for a good cause. The thing about war is the outcome is unpredictable. The immediate thing you do is predictable. The immediate thing you do is horrible, because war is horrible. And if somebody promises you that, “Well, this is horrible, like we have to bomb these hundreds of thousands of people in Japan. This is horrible, but it’s leading to a good thing,” truth is, you never know what this is leading to. You never know the outcome. You never know what the future is. that the present is evil, and you’re asked to commit this evil for some possible future good. Doesn’t make sense, especially since if you look at the history of wars, you find out that those so-called future goods don’t materialize. the future good of World War II was, “Oh, now we’re rid of fascism. Now we’re going to have a good world, a peaceful world. Now the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 50 million people died in World War II, but now it’s going to be OK.” Well, you’ve lived these years since World War II. Has it been OK? Can you say that those 50 million lives were—yeah, it had to be done because—because of what? No, the wars—violence in general is a quick fix. It may give you a feeling that you’ve accomplished something, but it’s unpredictable in its ends. And because it’s corrupting, the ends are usually bad.

So, OK, I won’t say anything more about war. And, of course, it wastes people. It wastes wealth. It’s an enormous, enormous waste.

what is there to do? We need to educate ourselves and other people. We need to educate ourselves in history. History is very important. That’s why I went into a little history, because, if you don’t know history, it’s as if you were born yesterday. If you were born yesterday, then any leader can tell you anything, you have no way of checking up on it. History is very important. I don’t mean formal history, what you learn in a classroom. No, history, if you’re learning, go to the library. Go—yeah, go to the library and read, read, learn, learn history. Yeah, so we have an educational job to do with history.

We have an educational job to do about our relationship to government, and to realize that disobedience is essential to democracy, you see. And it’s important to understand democracy is not the three branches of government. It’s not what they told us in junior high school. “Oh, this is democracy. We have three branches of government, kiddos, the legislative, the executive, judicial. We have checks and balances that balance one another out. If somebody does something bad, it will be checked by”—wow! What a neat system! Nothing can go wrong. Well, now, those structures are not democracy. Democracy is the people. Democracy is social movements. That’s what democracy is. And what history tells us is that when injustices have been remedied, they have not been remedied by the three branches of government. They’ve been remedied by great social movements, which then push and force and pressure and threaten the three branches of government until they finally do something. Really, that’s democracy.

we mustn’t be pessimistic. We mustn’t be cynical. We mustn’t think we’re powerless. We’re not powerless. That’s where history comes in. If you look at history, you see people felt powerless and felt powerless and felt powerless, until they organized, and they got together, and they persisted, and they didn’t give up, and they built social movements. Whether it was the anti-slavery movement or the black movement of the 1960s or the antiwar movement in Vietnam or the women’s movement, they started small and apparently helpless; they became powerful enough to have an effect on the nation and on national policy. We’re not powerless. We just have to be persistent and patient, not patient in the passive sense, but patient in the active sense of having a kind of faith that if all of us do little things—well, if all of us do little things, at some point there will be a critical mass created. Those little things will add up. That’s what has happened historically. People were disconsolate, and people thought they couldn’t end, but they kept doing, doing, doing, and then something important happened.

And I’ll leave you with just one more thought, that if you do that, if you join some group, if you join whatever the group is, a group that’s working on, gender equality or racism or immigrant rights or the environment or the war, whatever group you join or whatever little action you take, it will make you feel better. It will make you feel better. And I’m not saying we should do all these things just to make ourselves feel better, but it’s good to know that life becomes more interesting and rewarding when you become involved with other people in some great social cause. Thank you.

- Legendary historian Howard Zinn, speaking at Binghamton University, Upstate New York, just after the election, on November 8th. Howard Zinn is author of, among many other books, A People’s History of the United States.

Howard Zinn is one of this country’s most celebrated historians. His classic work, A People’s History of the United States, changed the way we look at history in America. First published a quarter of a century ago, the book has sold over a million copies and is a phenomenon in the world of publishing, selling more copies each successive year.

After serving as a bombardier pilot in World War II, Howard Zinn went on to become a lifelong dissident and peace activist. He was active in the civil rights movement and many of the struggles for social justice over the past half-century. He taught at Spelman College, the historically black college for women in Atlanta, and was fired for insubordination for standing up for the women.

Howard Zinn has written numerous books. He’s Professor Emeritus at Boston University. He recently spoke at Binghamton University, Upstate New York, a few days after the 2008 presidential election. His speech was called “War and Social Justice.”

- from Democracynow

Environmental Impact of the Internet

Several recent studies and articles have shown that a simple Google search can result in 1-10 grams of CO2 emissions. With over 200 million internet searches per day (2006) in the US alone, we are looking at up to 2000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per day. Last fall Google decided to work with Greenhouse Gas Services, a GE and AES joint venture, to capture and destroy landfill methane emissions from a North Carolina landfill. This reduction in greenhouse gas emissions helps to lessen net emissions and “offsets” some of Google’s own “carbon footprint.” Unfortunately the 2000 ton figure refers only to internet searches, but what about other uses for the internet?

Most computers create 40-80 grams of greenhouse gas emissions per hour through their electricity use (depending on electricity source and computer type), so the aggregated greenhouse gas emissions just from computers is quite sizable, nevermind the servers and fiber optic lines. Sources say that the internet accounts for 3 percent of US electricity consumption and 2 percent of global CO2 emissions.

So, what can be done to reduce the environmental impact of the internet? Many of the companies involved in building and operating the data centers, the brains of the internet, have been working on improving data center efficiency for several years. Processors have increased in computing power, while decreasing in energy demand, and new ways have been developed to keep massive server farms cool. Server farms can be located near hydroelectric facilities or other sources of renewable energy and the can be built in the arctic circle to take advantage of natural cooling.

On an individual level it is important to simply be aware that using the internet is not “carbon neutral” and don’t leave your computer on when you aren’t using it.

- from treehugger

Faster deforestation in Africa

Less than 2% of Africa’s forests are under community control, compared to a third in Latin America and Asia, say the Rights and Resources Initiative.

The deforestation rate in Africa is four times the world’s average.

At the current rate, it will take Congo Basin countries 260 years to reach the level of reform achieved in the Amazon.

Action on land tenure could help to halt deforestation, slow climate change and alleviate poverty, says the report, entitled Tropical Forest Tenure Assessment: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities.

The study was presented in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, at a meeting of forest community representatives from Africa, Latin America and Asia.

- from bbc

Bluefin tuna is an environmentally threatened species

Last year, Nobu was caught red-handed serving critically-endangered bluefin tuna to patrons, even after servers claimed its tuna was not bluefin. Now after heavy criticism, the trendy restaurant, owned by Robert DeNiro and popular with celebrities, has finally taken action.

It hasn’t removed bluefin tuna from its menu, as demanded by many environmental organizations and as its competitors have done. Instead, it has added a warning to the menu. An asterix next to its bluefin tuna dishes leads the patron to a message from Nobu on the bottom of the menu, which reads: “Bluefin tuna is an environmentally threatened species – please ask your server for an alternative.”

“Eating bluefin tuna is as bad as digging into a tiger steak or gorilla burger. It is entirely unacceptable that Nobu, or any restaurant, is serving an endangered species, and it must stop immediately if the species is to be saved from extinction,” said Willie Mackenzie, Greenpeace UK Oceans Campaigner when the organization discovered Nobu was serving bluefin last year. In a recent study The World Wildlife Fund found that unless the bluefin tuna fishery closes entirely, the fish will be functionally extinct in 3 years.

Despite its status, bluefin tuna is still legal to catch and serve. However, there is also a thriving illegal bluefin tuna market, meaning that all quotas set for bluefin tuna are surpassed.

A campaign has been waged against Nobu for five years regarding its decision to keep bluefin on the menu; it’s unlikely this new move will change that.

- from mongabay

Lithium battery with ten-fold increased energy capacity

Researchers in the UK are developing a rechargeable lithium-air battery that could deliver a ten-fold increase in energy capacity compared to that of currently available lithium-ion cells. The research work, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is being led by researchers at the University of St Andrews with partners at Strathclyde and Newcastle.

Lithium-air batteries use a catalytic air cathode in combination with an electrolyte and a lithium anode. Oxygen from the air is the active material for the cathode and is reduced at the cathode surface. An issue with Li-air batteries can be the accumulation of solid reaction products on the electrode, which blocks the contact between electrolyte and air.

The project addresses a number of the materials issues necessary to realize this high energy storage battery based on a non-aqueous O2 electrode. During the project, the team has so far more than tripled the capacity to store charge in the STAIR (St Andrews Air) cell.

The project is focused on understanding more about how the chemical reaction of the battery works and investigating how to improve it. The research team is also working towards making a STAIR cell prototype suited, in the first instance, for small applications, such as mobile phones or MP3 players.

- from greencarcongress

The long memory is the most radical idea in the world

Over the span of nearly four decades, Utah Phillips worked in what he referred to as “the Trade,” performing tirelessly for audiences in large and small cities throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. His songs were performed by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie. He earned a Grammy nomination for an album he recorded with Ani DiFranco and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Folk Alliance.

The legendary folk musician, peace and labor activist died on May 23rd of this year. He passed away in his sleep in Nevada City. He was seventy-three years old.

Born Bruce Duncan Phillips in 1935, he later adopted the name “Utah,” from where he grew up. The son of labor organizers, Utah Phillips was a lifelong member of the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies. As a teenager, he ran away from home and started living as a hobo who rode the rails and wrote songs about his experiences. In 1956, Utah Phillips joined the Army and served in the Korean War, an experience he would later refer to as the turning point of his life. In 1968, he ran for the US Senate on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket.

In Nevada City, California, he started a nationally syndicated folk music radio show called Loafer’s Glory, produced at community radio station KVMR. He also helped found the Hospitality House homeless shelter and the Peace and Justice Center there.

When you have an engagement, at least in my world, the world that I create for myself, an engagement doesn’t begin when you hit the stage and end when you leave the stage. It begins when you hit the city limits, and it ends when you leave the city limits.

Utah Phillips talking:

There’s a whole lot going on in that town. My trade is like being paid to go to schools, and every town is its own teacher. Every town, that’s my university. And there are marvels and wonders. There’s Hobos from Hell, are from Santa Cruz. They’re young people riding on the freight trains, and they’re better at it than I ever thought I would be. You’ve got the Homeless Garden Project. You’ve got just an enormous rich community here.

I was involved some years ago in helping to organize a street singers’ guild in this town, and it—you got to beat the streets and learn from the people, and then you’ve got to get on their stage and, having done that and been with those people, let that audience know that you’re not just doing the show you did in the town the night before, you know. You’re no—you’ve got to know who you’re with and where you are. That’s very important to me. And they’ve got to know that I understand that, that I’m really there for them.

I was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1935.

I left home. I went up to work in Yellowstone National Park during high school. I was going to make some summer money. I went up on the freight trains, and for the first time I rode the freight trains. And I worked on a road rating crew. And at that time, I was playing the ukulele and singing ersatz Hawaiian music—Johnny Noble, things like that, “Lovely Hula Hands,” “Malihini Melee.”

The other hands working on that crew, a lot of them were old, old alcoholics who could only shovel gravel. But they knew songs. And late at night, you know, there would be a fire. We would live in these clapboard shanties. They sang old songs, Jimmie Rodgers, and they sang old Gene Autry songs, songs I had never heard, but were much closer to the way I was living right there at that time, certainly a lot closer than as Hawaiian music. So they showed me how to turn my ukulele chords into guitar chords and taught me those songs.

And it’s right about then I started making songs in that mold, making songs of what I saw in the world around me, but using those tune models and those verse models that had endured for so long and will continue to endure simply because they work. So, you know, I’ve been making songs and stories for over fifty years now. It’s a way of life. It’s like breathing.

I joined the Army. Like old—as a string fellow said, some people learn things the hard way, but at least then you never forget it. I joined the Army and then got pipelined for Korea. I was there after Panmunjan, you know, after the treaty, right after the treaty there, the truce. Life amid the ruins—I mean, it was absolute life amid the ruins. Children crying—that’s the memory of Korea. Devastation. I saw an elegant and ancient culture in a small Asian country devastated by the impact of cultural and economic imperialism. And the impact of an army of young men given unlimited license for excess of every kind, of violence, sexual, booze, what have you, drugs—a blueprint for self-destruction. And I knew that if I endured that, I would perish, I would simply perish.

It was there in Korea in that situation around those kinds of experiences—and I was up—I was up on the Imjin River, and I wanted to swim in it, because I wanted to wash all that away, all that away. And I was told I couldn’t swim in the Imjin. And it was the young K orean there, Yoon Suk An [phon.], who explained to me why I couldn’t. He said, “When we marry, we move into our grandparents’, in with our grandparents, and—but the place is devastated. There’s nothing growing. It’s all dead. So when the first child comes, somebody has to leave, and it’s the old man. The grandfather will leave and go sit on the bank of the Imjin with a jug of water and a blanket until he dies and will roll down into the water.” He said, “You can’t swim in the Imjin, because those are our elders being carried out to sea.”

Well, that’s when I cracked. You know, that’s when I broke up. I said I can’t do this anymore. You know, this is all wrong. It all has to change. And the change has to begin with me. It was right then that I decided that the idea of manhood that I had been given, that blueprint for self-destruction, that my father had lied to me about manhood, my drill instructors, my Army sergeants, my scoutmaster, my gym instructor in high school. They had all lied to me about what manhood was, and it was up to me to begin to figure out what it really meant.

It takes a long time to shut up and listen. It takes a long time just to plain shut up and listen. I tell you, what I learned was—I decided that the great struggles, the wars that you’re talking about—it could be the Bosnian War, it could be the Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, it could be the Korean War, it could be the Iraqi War, whatever, it doesn’t matter—it’s all—every—the thing they all have in common is that it’s young men with guns doing it to everybody else. Women aren’t doing it. Kids aren’t doing it. Old people aren’t doing it. Disabled people aren’t doing it. It’s young people with guns, you know, that are doing it to everybody else. And we don’t have a problem with violence in the world. We’ve got a serious male problem. And I bought into it, so I know. And I’m buying myself out of it, you see. It’s terribly, terribly important for me for people to understand that and begin to shut up and listen. The most important movement in the world is the feminist movement. If we can really figure out what’s going on between men and women, the other problems will take care of themselves. I’m sure of it.

I was in Korea for eighteen months, and I extended for some months. I made it back to Salt Lake, and I was going into the post office, and there was an old man sitting under the bush out there, taking a water break. Well, that man was Ammon Hennacy, the great Catholic Worker, one of Dorothy Day’s people. And Ammon Hennacy had come to Salt Lake to open the Joe Hill House of Hospitality, one of the Catholic Worker houses. And Ammon took me in. And I was there with Ammon for about eight years at the Joe Hill House.

Ammon came to me one day and said, “You’ve got to be a pacifist.” And I said, “How’s that?” He said, “Well, you act out a lot. You use a lot of violent behavior.” And I was. You know, I was very angry, very angry person. “And you just act out a lot. And if you brought a lot, you’re not any good at it. You’re the one who keeps getting thrown through the front door, and I’m tired of fixing the damn thing. You’ve got to be a pacifist.”

He had a more fundamentalist way of looking at it. And I said, “What’s that?” He said, “Well, I could give you a book by Gandhi, but you wouldn’t read it. So”—but he said, “You’ve got to look at nonviolence like—your capacity for violence like an alcoholic looks at booze.” Alcohol—booze will kill an alcoholic, unless he has the courage to sit in a circle of people that are like that, put his hand up and say, “Hi. My name is Utah. I’m an alcoholic.” But then you can—once you own the behavior, you can deal with it. You know, you can have it defined for you by the people whose lives you’ve messed with, and it’s not going to go away. Twenty years sober, you’re not going to sit in that circle and say, “Well, I’m not an alcoholic anymore.” You’re going to put up your hand and say, “My name is Utah. I’m an alcoholic.”

He said, “It’s the same with violence. You acknowledge your capacity for violence, you see, and you learn how to deal with it every day, every instant, in every situation for the rest of your life, because it’s not going to go away. But it will save your life.” See, it’s a different way of looking at pacifism. I have to be a pacifist, you see.

So I said, “OK, I’ll do that, Ammon.” And he said, “It’s not enough.” And I said, “Oh.” He said, “You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of weapons, the weapons of privilege, economic privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege. You’re going to be a pacifist. You’re not just going to lay down guns and fists and knives and hard angry words. You’re going to have to lay down the weapons of privilege and go into the world completely disarmed. Well, you try that.” I’ve been at it—Ammon died over thirty years ago, and I’m still at it. But if there’s one struggle that animates my life, it’s probably that one.

The name come in the Army. I was from Utah, and nobody ever heard of anybody from Utah. Had mail call out in the street, and they holler out “Utah!” and I’m the guy who says, “Here, sir.” So the name, you know, since—it’s like calling somebody Tex if they’re from Texas or calling them Louise if they’re from Louisiana maybe. I don’t know. So that name just stuck.

The “U. Utah”—I’ve always been known as “U. Utah Phillips,” and that comes—I guess I can say that now. That’s been a closely held secret for years. When I was in Utah there first learning the kind of music I love, my favorite singer was T. Texas Tyler. So my friend, Norman Ritchie, the traveling teenage sage, started calling me U. Utah Phillips.

In my union, the Industrial Workers of the World, this is my fiftieth year in the IWW, by the way, my proudest association. It is the only organization I’ve ever been—ever known of that didn’t break faith with its elders.

Well, when I hit the road, when I went out to try to find out who I really was, to reconstruct my life, when I left Utah, I found those elders and I sought them out. I never thought I would be able to say this, Amy, but my—most of my elders, most of my great teachers, were born the century before last. [inaudible] born in the 1890s. And I think of Fred Thompson and the elders that I’ve talked to that went through the First World War as unionists and endured the Espionage Act, endured the enormous persecution, and just kept at it and kept at it. That was an amazing thing, because that was the—one of the effects of the war—and the same thing happened in the Second World War, was to use that super patriotism and to use the enhanced governmental powers to break the back of the labor movement, especially the radical labor movement, the IWW, and pretty damn well, near succeeded. In spite of that, of that terrible oppression and that awful war, we came out of that war with the beginning of the eight-hour day, with mine safety laws, with child labor laws, you know? We were still winning all the time we were losing.

Industrial Workers of the World was started—grew out of the Western Federation of Miners. It started in 1905. The cornerstone of the IWW was the notion that people in the same industry should belong to the same union.

Big Bill Haywood there in Colorado, Big Bill, the true American, he was one of the founders of the IWW. His father rode for the Pony Express. His mother was a forty-niner who got off the wagon train in Salt Lake. Bill was born in Salt Lake. There in Colorado, he’d see how a mine would get struck. So they’d bring in scabs to bring out scab ore, and then it would be transported to the mill on the union train and milled at the union mill. He said all of the people in this industry should belong to one union, because that’s union scabbing.

So industrial unionism was born as an alternative to craft unionism, like the AFL, organized bodies of workers fighting against each other. And it wasn’t just industrial unionism; it was the One Big Union, the OBU, a union of all skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers in one big union, divided up into industrial departments, syndicalists, syndicalism, which would then replace the government; the means of production in the hands of the producers, produced for use instead of profit, create abundance for workers and nothing for parasites; an end to the wage system. Well, like John Greenway called the IWW a banzai charge on capitalism, and that was about right.

Well, of course, the union dwindled, you know, after the First World War, the Palmer Raids, which were so much worse than anything we’re experiencing now, but still survived. And now the union is growing, has been growing for quite a long time now.

Attorney General Palmer, that was the first Red Scare, the first big Red Scare. The Russian Revolution had been accomplished right at the, during the First World War. So the first big Red Scare happened when Attorney General Palmer caused thousands of unionists to be jailed and many, many immigrant workers to be deported without any kind of due process. And it was like an industrial war. And Palmer—they did their best to break up the IWW, but it never succeeded, because we have survived and we have persisted.

Comparing Palmer Raids and the Espionage Act with the time we’re living in now.

I think that we’re being frog-marched into a corporate fascist takeover of the country. And no fooling, I think that we’re in the Weimar Republic. And that’s another thing that I would encourage young people to understand, what—that was Germany before the Second World War, the rise of Hitler, the rise of Nazism. Why didn’t people do anything? You know, the big question that young Germans are asking their grandparents: “Why didn’t you do something?” Read about the Weimar, compare the rise of fascism in Germany from the 1920s to what’s happening right here right now.

The long memory is the most radical idea in America. That long memory has been taken away from us. Listen, you young people I’m talking to, that long memory has been taken away from you. You haven’t gotten it in your schools. You’re not getting it on your television. You’re not getting it anywhere. You’re being leapfrogged from one crisis to the next. You know, you can’t remember what happened last week, because you’re locked into this week’s crisis.

No, turn that off. walk away from that. Walk out your front door. Go find your elders. Go find your true elders. Go find your people that lived that life, who knew that life and who know that history. And get your hands down into that deep rich stream of our people’s history. We divided our culture up into a market for youngers, a market for young adults, a market for young marrieds, a market for older people, you know. It’s not that way. And mass media contributed to that by taking the great movements that we’ve been through and trivializing important events. No, our people’s history is like one long river. It flows down from way over there. And everything that those people did and everything they lived flows down to me, and I can reach down and take out what I need, if I have the courage to go out and ask questions. That huge river, you know, it’s like tributaries that flow down into the polluted river and purify it and purify it.

I’ll watch television once a year just to get kind of an idea of what is happening to people’s minds, or maybe I want to go see the World Series. The frequency of images is so fast that I can’t track it. If I don’t—I don’t have TV, and I don’t like them, so I can’t understand how people can watch them. The frequency of the images is just too fast. I can’t take it all in. we’re thinking differently. Television alters consciousness. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t use it. It’s intended to alter consciousness.

Me, the last TV set I had, I shot. I don’t know what commercial importunement drove me off of the pier, but I hauled it into the backyard. It was up in Spokane, Washington, and I got a—had an old Stevens shotgun. I tied a scarf around it for a blindfold and scotch-taped a cigarette to the front and lit it and let it burn an appropriate amount of time, and then I blew a hole through it with the shotgun. It was out there in the lilac hedge, which grew through it eventually. It was kind of pretty after a while. But I have not, I haven’t owned one of those foolish things since.

I think that abandoning children, to a television set—children are born with this bridge between world time and dreamtime. They wander back-and-forth over it at will, and you never know which side of the bridge they’re going to be standing at either. You’ve just got to be willing to stand with them at the dreamtime end of the bridge, instead of jerking them over the bridge into world time on the presumption that facts will save your butt. Have they? Well, they won’t.

Kids understand storytelling. They understand stories, and they understand that particular kind of magic. And they also understand innately that all the wonders of the mind need not be explicit. We’re robbing children of their imagination. We just said earlier that the glory of radio is that it unlocks the imagination, as my wife said, and television—because you create your own images—and television gives you the images. Also, television is there to say to these kids, see, kids—you can take a coffee can and turn it into a rocket ship, you see? You create the story. If you have the story and you want to act out, and then you create the object to act it out. Television turns that around backwards and says you can’t have this story unless you buy the object—the exact opposite of what we’re born to do. We have to fight like hell to turn ourselves back to our own best natural selves. And that’s part of what I’m doing.

Myles Horton was the world’s—the best educator the country ever had. And I knew Myles. He was a fine, remarkable man, good preacher, too. The Highlander principle was that any group of people in the community experiencing a problem, if they sit in a circle and spend a couple of days telling each other their life story, will eventually arrive at a solution to the problem. So the Highlander School was created for people to come together and do that.

So there’s food that’s prepared for them, a place to stay. And if you run into a knotty problem and you need a lawyer or you need an expert—and, you know, ex is a has-been, a spurt is a drip under pressure—you need an expert come in there, they’ll come in and tell you what you want to hear, and then they have to leave. You know how a lawyer can take over a meeting. And then you go back and just use the information, because it’s right in the hands of those people to do that.

And that’s where Rosa Parks was. Martin Luther King was there. Remember that billboard during the ’60s that the John Birch Society put up, said Martin Luther King at a communist training school? That was Highlander that he was at.

it was Myles’s idea, an extraordinary idea that works. Myles was a great organizer by himself. Myles Horton told me once, he said he was doing an organizing job in a little, small town, a coal mine job, and the thugs were in town, and they were going to try to break the union, you know, pretty violent. The preacher feared for Myles’s life and gave him a horse pistol to protect himself, but it was broken, and it didn’t have any ammunition. And Myles said he didn’t know how use it anyway.

Myles was looking out the front window down on the street from the rooming house, and a big black car pulled up and these three goons got out. And Myles opened the window and, dangling that pistol out the window, said, “Hey, you down there. Let me tell you something.” They looked up and said, “Horton, you can’t tell us anything.” He said, “Oh, yes, I can. You’ve got to get organized.” They said, “What do you mean?” He said, “You’re not organized.” “What do you mean?” He said, “Well, now, look. You’re going to come upstairs and try to kill me. You’re going to kick in my door. I’m going to shoot the first one inside the door, and I may get the second one. Third one will get me. But you’ve got to decide which one’s going to come in first. You’ve got to get organized.” Well, they talked to each other for a while and got in the car and drove away. Myles could do that.

One time he—Myles, he did a—he was invited to give a talk on leadership. And he showed up in town, and he couldn’t remember where he was supposed to go. He lost the piece of paper. So he walked up to the main part of town, and he saw a bunch of people going into a hall, so he followed them. And he went in there and saw his name on the reader board, and everybody sat down and he sat down. When they were all sat down, he got up and walked to the front onto the stage and said, “Leadership is finding a bunch of people that look like they know where they’re going and following them, and when they’re all sitting down, stand up and talk to them about leadership.”

Highlander, New Market, Tennessee. There’s a wonderful book about Highlander called Seeds of Change—Seeds of Fire, Seeds of Change. And I highly recommend it. And then, The Long Haul is Myles Horton’s autobiography, and that’s—I think that’s still in print, so… You want to find yourself a hero, folks, you know, read Myles Horton. Now that he’s passed—Ammon Hennacy said to me, “If you got to have heroes, make sure they’re dead, so they can’t blow it.” That’s just good advice.

“One of my favorite people to talk about is Idaho Blackie, Idaho Blackie up there in—I used to cut wood in his woodlot, one of those old Wobblies that I sought out and I like to talk about. He got told to work in the forest. He used to work in the forest for his living. Well, unfortunately, his little holding that he was going to build his cabin on was over there in Hayden Lake, Idaho. Now, Hayden Lake, you may recall, was the home of the Church of Aryan Nations, those neo-Nazis that moved into north Idaho, Reverend Butler and his crowd. Well, his place butted right up against the compound of the Church of Aryan Nations, and that was not a marriage made in heaven.

I went over there to see if he was still alive, and he was out there duck hunting from the front porch, too old to go into the forest. He used to go into the forest when he was young with a case of whisky and a shotgun and get so high he’d go duck hunting with a rake. Well, he was out there blazing away, and he had got the duck, but it fell into the compound of the Church of Aryan Nations. Well, he got up real—got up painfully. He was in advanced stages of crusty old farthood. And he walked around the edge of the fence, and there was the church. These neo-Nazis pretend to be Christians, but then most Christians do. And there was a school, grades one through eight, and the little fascist kids were out there playing with their Klaus Barbie dolls. I don’t make this stuff up.

And he went to lay hold of the duck, and out of the back of the church came Reverend Butler himself, no spring chicken himself. He was in his jackboots and his suntans and his sand-brown belt and armband, little 30 mission crush cap with a patent leather bill on it. And he laid hold of that duck and allowed, how as, whatever the Lord chose to deliver up on that patch of ground belonged to the Church of Aryan Nations. They altercated some—fun to watch—and it got to be rancorous, though.

And finally, Reverend Butler drew himself up in all of his Prussian majesty and announced they were going to settle this in the manner of true Aryan gentlemen. I’ll be delicate, because this is radio. He said, “We are going to take turns kicking each other in our magic parts”—each other’s magic parts, you catch my drift—“and the one left standing is going to keep this duck. And you, sir, as it was your shot that felled the bird, will have first crack at it.”

Well, Blackie tottered back three or four feet, reached down into some private recess of his soul for energy hoarded for just this occasion, flew forward, delivered a right smart kick to Reverend Butler’s magic parts, cast him to the ground in a fit of doom and vituperation, flopping around like a fish, blanched out, turning completely white—what he’d been trying to do all his life, anyway. Finally, he dug his heels into the ground, pushed himself up against a tree, levered himself to a standing position, rocking back, heel to toe, preparing to have at Idaho Blackie. Blackie turned to him and said, “It’s OK. You can keep the duck.””

Let’s see, you started out with what media has done to people. You know that better than I do. That’s why you do what you do. See, you’re doing an alternative media. And if we play our cards right and have enough time, then pretty soon it won’t be alternative media anymore. But then, we have a thorough understanding—don’t we, Amy—that they fight with money and we fight with time, and they’re going to run out of money before we run out of time. So we’ll just be patient, and you do your work, and I’ll do mine, and we’ll catch up and overtake them.

It’s a damn shame, though, that we have to be alternative. But then, we’re in a capitalist environment, we’re in a capitalist system that’s built on—that’s built on the least commendable features of the human psyche, greed and envy, rather than the best. We in community radio, in pirate radio, in alternative music distribution, we reach for the best in people, you know, we don’t—not lowest common denominators. And we are building a new world within the shell of the old.

I don’t feel pessimistic about that at all. There’s simply too many good people right here in this room, too many good people on the street, close to the street, doing too many good things for me to afford the luxury of being pessimistic. I’m going to—I’ll tell people that tonight, damn it. I’m glad it came up. If I look at the world from the top down, from FOX, God help me, or CNN or—there ought to be a CNN Anon to wean people from that idiocy. If I look at it from the top down, I get seriously depressed. The world’s going to hell in a wheelbarrow. But if I walk out the door, turn all that off, and go with the people, whatever town I’m in, who are doing the real work down at the street level, like I say, there’s too many good people doing too many good things for me to let myself be pessimistic about that. I’m hopeful, can’t live without hope. Can you?

The music industry, the music monster, well, I bailed on them. I was in New York, after I left Utah on a kind of blacklist, and I was a fish out of water. I had to be told I was singing folk music. And I wound up in New York City, and there was a fellow there that was going to manage me and Rosalee Sorrels. We were assured he was the most honest manager in New York City. It took me a year to figure out that “scrupulously honest” in New York City was a jailable offense elsewhere. And I bailed out on that, you know, and I realized that I would no longer own what I do. I was a good Wobbly. You need to own the means of your production. I would have to abdicate most of the creative decisions to non-artists, and I said I’m not going to do that.

I decided that I would learn the trade. The trade is a fine, elegant, beautiful, very fruitful trade. In that trade, I can make a living and not a killing, and that was very important to me, to make a living and not a killing, to live reasonably well. I found a world of folk music. I found folk music societies all over the country, little singer circles, a little program here, Spirit of the Woods, Manistee, Michigan, what have you. And these were people who part of their pattern of social responsibility was being committed to making sure folk music happened in their community, like you might work for United Fund or muscular dystrophy. And so, I would come into town to do a concert as a partner in that effort. So the past thirty-five years I’ve been in this trade, I had no bosses. That’s another part of it: no boss. I make all the creative decisions.

And then, this wonderful glorious movement, the most healthiest one that’s happening in this country, is organized folk music, people turning off those machines and getting together to sharing music and food as a holy activity, singer circles, folksong societies, campouts, things like that, take care of each other’s kids, potlucks. It’s—you find that town, town, city for city, all happening below the level of media notice. And that’s where I happen, that’s where I want to happen, below the level of media notice, off of their radar, and create this world that’s apart, but which, as I say, if we’re patient and continue to build and to do our work in place, we will no longer be the margin. We will no longer be the alternative.

John R. Cash once sent me a—well, no, he called me on the phone. There was a fellow named Paul Milosevich, used to paint a beautiful painting for outlaw country singers down in Austin, Texas. I discovered the difference between outlaw country music and Nashville country music was that in outlaw they had dirty hats and in Nashville they had clean white cowboy hats. And if you wanted to be an outlaw, you had to take it off and throw it under a truck at a truck stop and let it run over four or five times, then you could be an outlaw. I knew that.

Paul Milosevich had taken him a bunch of songs I had made up, and John R. Cash, Johnny Cash, said, “I’d like to record these songs.” And Paul said, “Well, you’d better talk to Utah first.” He could have demanded a license. You know, that’s the way the law is written, copyright laws. If they had already been recorded once, you could demand a license. But no, he’s a gentleman. He called me up and said, “I want to record these songs.” And I said, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t do that.”

And we talked a good deal about that, you know. I think what I told him, I said, “I don’t want to contribute anything to that industry. I can’t fault you for what you’re doing. I admire what you do. But I can’t feed that dragon. I’m not going to feed that dragon.” And, of course, he and other people said, “Well, think of the money that you’d make. You could put it together in any cause you wanted.” And I said, “Mr. Cash, think about dollars as bullets. And the ragged band of revolutionaries meet on the field with the general of the army, and the general says, ‘We’re going to divide up the bullets. I’ll take seven, and you’ll take three. And then we’ll fight.’ Who’s going to win?” See, so—and a lot of people got on me. Melvina Reynolds was furious with me for not doing that, you know, for not making the deal. And I was on the edge of doing it, you know, any number of times.

And finally I said I’ve got to resolve this. I got a call from Santa Rosa. They were going to open a peace center, and they asked me if I’d come and sing. And I said, “Well, I think I can get there.” And they said, “By the way, Father Daniel Berrigan will be there.” I said, “OK,” and I went over there so I could do the show, but also so I could ask him, Father Berrigan, say, “What do I do in this situation? Would you have any advice?” And so, I told him the story backstage, and Father Berrigan said—all he said was “Oh, yeah. They’ll always tell you how much good you can do with dirty money.” And he walked away. So, OK, you know, I called and said, “No, no. Don’t do that.”

What I wound up doing was turning around, since there is mandatory licensing, is telling people who want to record those songs I make up, even if you’re a little label or you’re self-produced, you know, folk legacy, something like that, go ahead and do it, I just won’t sue you. And if somebody does demand a license, you know, and gets it, like the industrial-strength performers, I set up a non-sprinkling trust called the busker’s fund. And the money, I don’t even see it, just bypasses me and goes into there for people for medical relief for over-the-road folkies who can’t get health insurance.

I don’t want to make money writing songs. There are people who make money writing songs; I can’t fault that. I’m an anarchist. I don’t make rules for other people. I make rules for myself. And it’s also a kind of penance for what I saw and felt when I was in Korea. And that’s where we started, isn’t it?

I ran for the US Senate in 1968 on the Peace and Freedom ticket, took a leave of absence from state service—I was a state archivist—and ran a full campaign, twenty-seven counties. We took 6,000 votes in Utah. But when it was over, my job would vanish, and I couldn’t get work anymore in Utah.

So I hung on for about a year living on a cot in the back of a warehouse, keeping a little draft resistance center going. And, of course, by that time, we were dealing with deserters that didn’t want to go back to ’Nam, rather than, you know, the resisters. And I did some work with the Utah Migrant Council, started the Joe Hill House again, because Ammon had moved to Phoenix because he was too old to run it.

Finally, I had just run out of moves. I couldn’t find work, and that’s when people, friends like Rosalee Sorrels, suggested I leave Utah and try to make a living telling stories and singing songs, which seemed criminal or somehow unthinkable in Utah. But that’s when I went out and found—discovered this whole world.

I was an archivist, yeah. I handled 75,000 cubic feet of public records. For an information junkie, that’s heaven. Yeah, I loved studying archival science, and I still have a library in my home that I curate, my own little research library of popular antiquities. And that’s where my mind lives when I’m at home.

Archival science is in a serious—a serious crisis, and that’s because of electronic media, electronic storage and retrieval. A lot of hotshot, fancy, high-tech salesmen have gone to a lot of archives and archivists and sold them some bogus hardware and software. How many books has the Library of Congress lost? Millions of books, because the images have vanished, whatever the storage system is, electronic storage system is. It’s degraded to the point where the stuff is no longer usable.

In the Utah state archives, the best and most durable records are on paper, from the 1800s, the old Mormon Governor Brigham Young’s papers. Why? Because there was potassium in the water they used to make the paper in their own mill, and that’s a natural paper preservative. And that’s true, I think, of any archive in the country. You talk to the archivists; they’ll say the most durable resource they have is still on paper.

Well, what’s the shelf life of a CD? Is it about ten years, ten, twelve years? Congress won’t accept tape for archival purposes, because after about ten, fifteen years, it bleeds through, you see? That it—paper. You know, LPs, I have, what, over 150 John McCormack 78s from the early 1900s—my favorite singer, John McCormack—and I can play those and listen to those. Same with my LPs. The whole information is becoming more and more temporary. And you’re absolutely right. You know, it is terribly threatening to every archive to be bullied by technocrats into going that route.

Ammon never went to the polls, but you couldn’t tell him you hadn’t voted. He did vote. Ammon’s body was his ballot. And he cast it in behalf of the poor around him every day of his life. And he paid a terrible price for that. You couldn’t tell him he hadn’t voted. He said, “Yes, I did vote. I just didn’t assign responsibility to other people to do things. I accept responsibility and saw to it that something got done.” It’s a different way of looking at voting, isn’t it? And you can do that all the time. You could have your life. And that’s the way I live my life. My body is my ballot. It’s a lesson I learned from Ammon. That’s my way. That’s the vow I took, and I’m not going to break it. Right?

Given that, I can’t, of course, ask people to do something that I wouldn’t do, you know, but it does appear to me that these fascists that have taken over have got to get—we’ve got to get rid of them. They’re not Republicans, and they’re not Democrats up there. You know, they’re something else. They’re corporate fascists. And they got to be out of there. And the only organized force on the planet—in the country that I know of that can do that is the Democratic Party. God help us all. You know, it’s like buying a seat on the Titanic, the Democratic Party, but they’re the only force, organized force, that has the ability to do it. So it’s imperative that the entire progressive movement come together, like they did in the Great Depression at the time of the CIO.

Every progressive force in the country came together, gave them the window of opportunity, Roosevelt’s second term, and put their differences on the shelves, stopped hammering on each other. In the Great Depression. And we came out of that with Social Security and workmen’s compensation and a minimum wage, you understand? The whole progressive movement, from animal rights to the feminist movement to anti-nuclear—I don’t care what permutation—have got to saying, “This is my issue, this is my issue,” and join forces and once again create the united front, total united front, and take over the Democratic Party, and that’s the only way we’re going to be able to do this, to pull this off. We can’t do that—then, when we’ve done it, go back and hammer on each other, OK, but for right now, all the difference has got to be pushed aside. I am absolutely appalled at these Democratic candidates hammering on each other, you know, not recognizing the direness of our situation.

It is long since, since those people should have sat down in a room together and decided which one could be elected and put everything they had into that person. Time has long since passed. They’ve got to do it. And otherwise, we’re in for very much serious, more serious times than we’ve got now. It’s not that time has run out. It’s going to make it a lot harder on everybody else to try to make it better.

- from democracynow

Chernobyl legacy

Nearly 370 farms in Britain are still restricted in the way they use land and rear sheep because of radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident 23 years ago, the government has admitted.

Environmentalists have seized on the figures as proof of the enormous dangers posed by nuclear power as the UK moves towards building a new generation of plants around the country.

Dawn Primarolo, minister for health, revealed 369 farms and 190,000 sheep were affected, but pointed out this was a tiny number compared with the immediate impact of radioactive fallout from Ukraine.

“This represents a reduction of over 95% since 1986, when approximately 9,700 farms and 4,225,000 sheep were under restriction across the United Kingdom. All restrictions in Northern Ireland were lifted in 2000,” she added.

David Lowry, a member of Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates, said the figures demonstrated the “unforgiving hazards” of radioactivity dispersed into the environment, whether from Chernobyl in Ukraine, thousands of miles away and 23 years ago, or over decades from the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland.

“Any breach of containment accident at Sellafield’s high activity liquid radioactive waste storage tanks would release many times the radioactivity released in the Chernobyl accident. And these tanks had an under-reported loss of coolant a month ago, so we have been warned,” he added.

The Ukraine explosion and fire was the biggest nuclear accident ever. In its aftermath 237 people suffered from acute radiation sickness, of whom 31 died within the first three months. Accurate statistics on the wider health problems have been hard to ascertain because the Soviet authorities of the time refused to provide details.

More than 130,000 people were resettled from the immediate area and experts say there should be no farming there for at least 200 years. The Food Standards Agency said the release of radiocaesium-137 in upland areas of Britain is still able to pass easily from soil to grass and accumulate in sheep.

The European Commission imposed a maximum limit of 1,000 becquerels per kilogram (bq/k) of radiocaesium in sheep meat affected by the accident to protect consumers. Under a “mark and release” scheme in the restricted areas, a farmer wishing to move animals out of the area must have them monitored by a hand-held device.

Revelations about the continuing impact of the Chernobyl accident come weeks after three different sites were bought in auction by EDF and other power companies for building new atomic plants in Britain. The sites at Bradwell in Essex, Wylfa in Anglesey and Hinkley Point in Somerset were auctioned for £400m by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

A similar process is expected to start shortly for land near the huge Sellafield nuclear complex in Cumbria, as the government moves to put in place new electricity generating plants to provide relatively low-carbon power and bolster domestic energy sources at a time when old atomic stations are nearing the end of their lives.

- from guardian

12 reasons for bike to work

1. It’s easier to finance a new bicycle than a new car. Thanks to the recession, auto loans are hard to find these days — even if you have good credit. But for the price of a single car payment, you can buy a well-made bicycle that should outlast most cars. Add a few hundred dollars more for rain gear, lights, and accessories, and you have all-weather, anytime transportation.
2. A bicycle has a tiny manufacturing footprint when compared to a car. All manufactured goods have environmental impact, but bicycles can be produced for a fraction of the materials, energy, and shipping costs of a car.
3. Bicycles produce no meaningful pollution when in operation. Bikes don’t have tailpipes belching poisonous fumes into the atmosphere. They also eliminate the oil, fuel, and hydraulic fluids dripped by automobiles onto the road surface — which means less toxic runoff into local waterways.
4. Bikes save taxpayers money by reducing road wear. A twenty pound bicycle is a lot less rough on the pavement than a two-ton sedan. Every bicycle on the road amounts to money saved patching potholes and resurfacing city streets.
5. Bicycles are an effective alternative to a second car. Perhaps you’re not in a position to adopt a bicycle as primary transportation. But bikes make great second vehicles. You can literally save thousands of dollars per year using a bicycle for workday commuting and weekend errands in households which might otherwise be forced to maintain two cars.
6. Using a bike for transportation can help you lose weight and improve your overall health. The health benefits of regular aerobic exercise are well known. Depending on your riding style and local road conditions, you could easily burn 600 calories an hour through brisk cycling. Most bike commuters report losing 15 to 20 pounds during their first year in the saddle without changing their eating habits.
7. You can store a dozen bicycles in a single automobile-sized parking place. Parking lots have enormous environmental and financial impact, particularly in urbanized areas. The more bikes you can get on the road, the fewer parking spaces you need to build.
8. Bicycles don’t burn gasoline. Fuel is cheap compared to last year, and the economic downturn is likely to keep a lid on petroleum demand for a while. But we’re not producing any more oil today than we were when it was more than $100 a barrel. A healthy bike culture will help ease pressure on supply once demand returns.
9. Bicycling may be faster and more efficient than taking a car. We’re not talking about the crazy — and illegal — antics of New York bicycle messengers. But bikes are often faster than cars in urban areas, especially when city designers have set aside proper bike lanes. There’s nothing more satisfying as a bicycle commuter than breezing past a long line of gridlocked traffic.
10. Bikes cost much less to maintain and operate than automobiles. You’ll never throw a rod on a bicycle, and dropping a transmission on a bike usually means replacing a bent derailleur hanger or worn-out chain. Bicycles do require service, but you can learn to perform most of it yourself. Even if you have a shop do things for you, costs will be trivial compared to a car.
11. Bicycles provide mobility for those who may not qualify or afford to drive. Not everyone can get a driver’s license (or wants one), and the cost of purchasing, insuring, and maintaining a car is out of reach for a lot of people. Almost everyone can afford some sort of bike. Other than walking, bicycles are the most cost effective transportation on the planet.
12. Studies show that bicycle commuters are healthier, more productive, and require less time-off at work. This is why most enlightened employers are eager to accommodate commuting cyclists. Healthy workers are better workers — and that’s good for the bottom line. Bikes are smart business.

May is Bike to Work Month. May 14 – 18 is Bike to Work Week. And May 18 is Bike to Work Day.

- from lighterfootstep

Electric Bus

UQM Technologies, Inc. announced that Proterra’s EcoRide BE35 battery-electric transit bus will be equipped with a UQM PowerPhase 150 propulsion system.
The 35-foot BE35 battery-electric transit bus is being showcased on a four city California clean bus tour which began in San Jose on February 6th. After San Jose, the bus will make stops in selected California cities including Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Francisco.

Proterra’s 35-foot EcoRide transit bus seats 37 passengers and features a lightweight composite body. The UQM® PowerPhase®150 electric propulsion system produces peak torque of 650 N-m and peak power of 150 kW (201 horsepower).

The system has a continuous torque rating of 400 N-m and a continuous power rating of 100kW (134 horsepower). The system also features optimized four-quadrant performance, dynamic torque, speed and voltage control, regenerative braking and system energy efficiency of over 90 percent across substantially its entire performance regime.

- TerraVolt Energy Storage System – the industry’s only system that can be fully charged in less than 10 minutes; and the longest lasting energy storage system available for heavy duty applications;
- Flexible ProDrive and vehicle control system that can operate in battery-electric mode or with any small auxiliary power unit (APU) to extend vehicle range when needed;
- All-electric components optimized through vehicle management systems to reduce energy usage throughout the vehicle’s operating cycle;
- Regenerative braking system utilizing the UQM® PowerPhase®150 that enables the EcoRide BE35 to recapture over 90% of the vehicle’s kinetic energy available during braking;
- Sophisticated battery management system operates at the ‘cell’ level to optimize energy efficiency and system life.

- from puregreencars

Indian stock market

FII took 500 million dollar from indian market. We dont know whether that money is took by US Fii or Mauritias Fii. We dont know whether its pention fund or hedge fund. FIIs are not homogenious. they are coming from 75 different countries. But we dont have any idea of them. And we are analysing the market without these knowledge.

Participatory Notes become 60% of the total FII money. The money in PN can be drug money, terrorist moeny. Oct 2007 SEBI tried to put some restrictions on PN to find source of the money. Reserve bank of india asked for a complete ban on PN. But finance ministry overruled that. PN is not transparent.

FII and FDI are different. FII is the floating money in the stock market. It did not create job or industry. FDI is direct investment from foreign investon in indian industry. It generates jobs.

FII can come with black money and pour it into our stock market. But an Indian citizen should have all the the documents about source of the income and tax paid etc to enter into market. This is a double rule on the stock market.

In PN the “non disclosed investers” number come down in last two years. One reason is that people who take domestic money by havala and put that money as PN in the market do not have faith in the market. So thay are not putting money into market. When the market goes up then the PN number will rise again.

SENSEX took 2 years to rise from 10000 to 21000 in early Jan 2007. Nine months after it collapsed to 10000. Again it started rising again in 2009. SENSEX is mirroring the way FIIs are pumping money.

in 2007 FII pumped 17.5 billion US dollars. in 2008 it withdraw 14.5 billion US dollars. in 2009 again FII pumping the money into the market.

Now fundamentals are not affecting the market. There is no justifiable reson why market went to 10000 to 21000 or why it crashed from 21000 to 8000. The fundamentals of the economy did not changed.

Stock exchange holds only 4% to 12% total saving of indians for the last few years. total number of investers are 3% of the india’s pupulation.

- Loksabha TV

Shooting Back

Violence flared last week after Israeli riot police forcibly evicted some 250 settlers from a disputed Palestinian-owned home that the settlers had occupied last year. Tensions have been high ever since an Israeli High Court ruling last month that ordered the settlers to vacate the building.

Following Thursday’s eviction, settlers from the nearby Kiryat Arba settlement went on what the Israeli press has described as a “rampage” against Palestinians. They shot at Palestinians, set fire to homes, cars and olive groves, and defaced mosques and graves. Hebron resident Hosni Abu Seifan was among the Palestinian victims of settler gunfire.

HOSNI ABU SEIFAN: [translated] The settlers attacked us at the house and fired live bullets on us. With a handgun, they shot my father. Then, later, they set the house on fire. There was only a few meters between us, maybe one or one-and-a-half meters, and he probably had his hand on the gun, too, when he shot my father.

The shots fired by the settlers at Hosni Abu Seifan and his father were captured on video. The footage shows a settler firing a handgun at the two Palestinian men at close range. The video was shot by a family member of the injured men. He was using a camera distributed by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem that has given more than a hundred video cameras to Palestinian families across the West Bank so they can record violence by settlers and the Israeli army.

The settlers caught on camera have reportedly turned themselves in to the Hebron police. But the footage caused a minor stir inside Israel, and outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert condemned the settlers’ actions, saying they constituted a “pogrom.”

Shooting Back is a project that B’Tselem has been running for the past two years. It’s basically a video distribution—camera distribution project. B’Tselem give out small video cameras to Palestinian civilians living in what they call hotspots, that is, next to settlements, next to checkpoints, next to military installations, next to the so-called separation barrier, basically areas where they know there are frequent human rights violations, but which usually go undocumented.

And the basic idea is to be able to inform the Israeli public, first of all, but also the international public, of what is happening in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. A picture is worth more than a thousand words. The success of this project can be measured at a time like this when a video clip filmed by one of the family members of the three Palestinians who were shot, Jamal Abu Seifan, he filmed the clip himself and was able to reach local media in Israel and international media.

The problem that the settlers are living in the heart of the city, that means they are living between, arround, 200,000 Palestinians who are living very close to the settlers. And the settlers, they don’t like the Arabs, who are very close to them. And the settler—the Palestinians, they see those settlers are occupying Hebron. So around, now, 500 settlers are living in all the city of Hebron. They are occupying some houses there.

The army are closing many roads because the settlers are there.

Many Palestinian houses, they use a ladder to go to their homes, because the main door is welded by the army. Many other Palestinian houses and families, they need to pass four or five checkpoints in 100 meters to go into their homes. So the daily life there, it’s very, very hard.

The people are suffering daily from the settlers’ presence in the city. They are not against a Jewish presence, but they are against the radical and the fanatic settlers who are living and declaring Hebron as an Israeli city.

There are two laws in Hebron. The Israeli government, they implement the military law on the Palestinians, and they civic law on the settlers, which means double standard.

And the settlers in Hebron, they are mainly armed with guns or with weapons. And it’s very, very important, you know, from the international world and from the Israeli people to say something about the settlers’ weapons. It’s very, very important to take off the weapons from them, especially because they are very, very violent people, and they believe in violence.

Issa Amro and Mich’ael Zupraner talking with Anjali Kamat and Sharif Abdel Kouddous

Issa Amro, B’Tselem field worker.
Mich’ael Zupraner, works with B’Tselem’s Shooting Back project and runs an experimental internet/TV channel called HEB2.

- from democracynow. 10 Dec 2008.

Cooperating corporates

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers reached an agreement last week with Subway, the third largest fast-food chain in the world and the biggest fast-food buyer of Florida tomatoes. Subway now joins other fast-food giants—McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King—that have all agreed to pay farm workers at least another penny per pound of tomatoes they harvest and improve working conditions.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders hailed the agreement with Subway, describing it as “yet another blow to the scourge of slavery that continues to exist in the tomato fields of Florida.”

Coalition members are in New York this week for their Northeast Fair Food tour and will be honored tonight by the Small Planet Fund on the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.

This agreement has an incredible importance for Coalition of Immokalee Workers movement, because it started as an idea to bring the biggest fast-food corporations to the table in order to improve the conditions that workers face in the fields every day, conditions that go from stagnant wages to slavery, in the most extreme conditions. And right now, with this agreement with Subway, workers could say that the most important representatives of the fast-food industry have already given their position on the situation, and they are in favor of a change. So now the question is for the supermarket industry and the providers of food to schools, like Aramark and Sodexo, that continue to benefit from the misery of communities like Immokalee Workers.

Basically, today, a farm worker has to pick two-and-a-half tons of tomatoes in order to make only the equivalent to the minimum wage of Florida. But that’s picking by piece. The tomato bucket of thirty-two pounds gets paid from forty to forty-five cents. That’s without any type of benefits nor protections. We work from ten to fourteen hours in a normal day, seven days a week, if there’s work, without receiving overtime pay.

Farm workers in most of the states of this country are excluded from the National Labor Relations Act that gives workers a right to organize. That’s why the agricultural industry have not paid attention to the demands that we had in the past. And asked questions, like, who’s benefiting the most from their poverty? How could they change the way that the agricultural industry, the corporate agricultural industrial, exists today in the United States? And it was by focusing on the big buyers, that are the ones who get more profit than anybody else.

the Tomato Growers Exchange is an entity that represents about 90 percent of the growers in Florida and goes to Tallahassee or D.C. to lobby on their behalf.

And what has happened ever since, more or less, we reached the agreement with McDonald’s is that the Growers Exchange has come out strongly opposing these agreements, first saying that they were un-American or saying that they’re possibly illegal, just saying that they didn’t want their members to participate in them. And so, they actually implemented a $100,000 fine against any of their own member growers who would be willing to fully participate in these agreements and allow the extra penny per pound to get through to the workers.

There are growers who are willing to do that, because for a couple of years after workers reached agreement with Taco Bell in 2005, the penny per pound passed through was working completely fine. It wasn’t until the growers put up this resistance that that was halted.

Today, one of the major corporations that workers have agreements with remain fully committed to carrying out those agreements. They’re still paying the extra penny per pound, but it’s going into a sort of neutral escrow account instead of getting to the workers. The money from that account will be disbursed to the workers very soon, possibly starting with this season.

Marc Rodrigues and Gerardo Reyes talking with Anjali Kamat and Sharif Abdel Kouddous

Marc Rodrigues, Co-coordinator of Student/Farmworker Alliance. That’s the national network of students in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.
Gerardo Reyes, Farmworker and member of Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

- from democracynow. 10 Dec 2008.

Cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

A high-seas mission departs from San Francisco next month to map and explore a sinister and shifting 21st-century continent: one twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.

The toxic soup of refuse was discovered in 1997 when Charles Moore, an oceanographer, decided to travel through the centre of the North Pacific gyre (a vortex or circular ocean current). Navigators usually avoid oceanic gyres because persistent high-pressure systems — also known as the doldrums — lack the winds and currents to benefit sailors.

Mr Moore found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Worn down by sunlight and waves, discarded plastic disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent, but in subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one.
In June the 151ft brigantine Kaisei (Japanese for Planet Ocean) will unfurl its sails in San Francisco. Project Kaisei’s flagship will be joined by a decommissioned fishing trawler armed with specialised nets.

The UN’s environmental programme estimates that 18,000 pieces of plastic have ended up in every square kilometre of the sea, totalling more than 100 million tonnes. The North Pacific gyre — officially called the northern subtropical convergence zone — is thought to contain the biggest concentration. Ideal conditions for shifting slicks of plastic also exist in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the North and South Atlantic, but no research vessel has investigated those areas. If this exploratory mission is successful, a bigger fleet will depart in 2010.

- from timesonline. 2 May 2009.

Charge tax on Car adverts

Car adverts should carry prominent climate change “health warnings” akin to those on cigarette packets, according to a Labour MP who is critical of the government’s progress on climate change legislation.

Colin Challen MP, who is chair of the all-party climate change group, said that government warnings on car ads might force car companies to be more “honest”. He said many cars are promoted as being “greener” when they are actually environmentally damaging.

He said the car industry was spending £800m a year on UK advertising prior to the recession, while the government’s public education campaign ActOnCO2 cost just £12m over three years.

He added that it is “wholly counter-intuitive to expect people to change their behaviour when most of the daily messages they receive tell them it’s business as usual”.

Car promotions should carry climate change message, said Challen, who is a member of the Commons Energy and Climate Change select committee. “You maybe have 25 or 35% of the space of any promotional material given over to a health warning. These warnings would be graded depending on the emissions from the vehicle, with the worst gas-guzzlers carrying the most severe warnings. “It would have to counter the impression given by some manufacturers that their vehicles are greener,” Challen added.

The warnings would be based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 4th Assessment report, regarded as the foremost authority on the state of climate change science. The warnings would highlight the consequences of dangerous climate change such as sea level rise, increasing deaths, species extinctions, food and water security, and heightened regional conflicts.

Challen said he favoured a personal carbon trading scheme to get on top of emissions in which every citizen has an annual carbon allowance. Those who went beyond their carbon budget would need to buy carbon credits from people who had not. “It would be no more difficult to operate than a Nectar card,” he said, “Good behaviour would be rewarded. Bad behaviour would have to be paid for.”

- from guardian. 5 May 2009.

Actually we have to charge tax on car adverts too. Say some 25%. And use that money to improve public transport systems.

When you buy a nuke

Progress Energy said Friday it has pushed back by 20 months its schedule for bringing on-line two planned new nuclear reactors in Florida, after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said its review of the plant site will take longer than expected.

Progress also said it will spread out over five years certain early–stage costs for the new reactors that it could legally bill to ratepayers entirely in 2010, an apparent bid to tamp down customer anger over rate increases linked to the project that took effect earlier this year.

New nuclear plants are so expensive they are likely to provide electricity at some 15 cents per kilowatt hour — or possibly more than 20 cents/kWh. The precise answer — 50% higher than average U.S. electricity prices or more than 100% higher — is hard to know since it is all but impossible to find a utility willing to stand behind a firm price in a rate hearing.

When we last left Progress Energy in 2008, it had said the twin 1,100-megawatt plants it intends to build would cost $14 billion, which “triples estimates the utility offered little more than a year ago.” And that didn’t even count the 200-mile $3 billion transmission system utility needs, which brings the price up to a staggering $7,700 a kilowatt. Under Florida law, to pay for these nuclear power plants, Progress Energy can raise the rates of its customers a $100 a year for years and years and years before they even get one kilowatt-hour from these plants. Sweet deal, no?

Energy Daily (subs. req’d, quoted above) updates the Florida story. Let’s start with the cost to consumers:
As for project costs, Progress said it has filed with the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) for permission to add to customer bills next year an additional $6.69 per thousand kilowatt-hours (KWH) charge to cover the Levy County reactor costs as well as work to boost output at its existing Crystal River nuclear plant from 900 to 1,080 megawatts.

The costs of the Levy County project have already irked some Florida ratepayers who saw their bills jump 25 percent in January to cover early costs for the new reactors as well as increases in the cost of fuel Progress purchases to generate power.

From too cheap to meter to too expensive to matter.

For the record, “In 2007, the average monthly residential electricity consumption was 936 kilowatthours (kWh).” So we’re talking more than $70 a year added to the average customers bills for a long, long time before they even see a single kilowatt hour.

In reaction to customer anger, Progress in April began deferring some of the costs of the Levy County project.

Under the company’s new cost-recovery proposal announced Friday, Progress will bill ratepayers next year 30 cents per 1,000 KWH to pay for the power up-rate at Crystal River, $1.69 per 1,000 KWH to recoup deferred costs from 2009 for the Levy County project and $4.70 per KWH to cover costs for the new reactors incurred in 2010.

Actually, Progress said that to fully recover those costs in 2010 as allowed it would have to bill customers about twice that–$12.63 per 1,000 KWH. But Progress said it has instead proposed to spread the balance over five years of future billings to “[lessen] the impact yearly impact on the customer and [provide] some short-term customer price relief.

“The Levy County nuclear project continues to be the best baseload generation option for Florida taking into account cost, potential carbon regulation, fossil fuel price volatility and the benefits of fuel diversification,” said Progress in Friday’s press release.

Well, It is the best baseload generation option for Florida other than energy efficiency and biomass and a hybrid concentrated solar power and natural gas plant.

Heck, if you could forward bill customers for energy efficiency and do every energy efficiency measure that was cheaper than even $.10 a kilowatt hour, you wouldn’t need to build another nuclear power plant for a long, long time.

Progress Energy’s announcement that it is delaying these two nuclear reactors by at least 20 months is not entirely unexpected given the difficulties in obtaining financing for such a megaproject. The delay of 20 months, noted as “giving the economy time to recover”, will also likely push the project into a time period when annual cost escalations for power plant construction projects will again be robust. It is highly likely this delay and the accelerated cost escalations will push the total project costs well over the company’s initial projections. If the project was not already considered too expensive, wait for the other shoe to drop when these forces affect its costs.

A project that was already expected to take 10 years to complete is now moving into a 12-year horizon. If this is an example of how quickly nuclear power can help alleviate global warming, its not a good one.

Progress Energy is also deferring early cost recovery from ratepayers even though it seems from their announcement these costs were quite significant. These early cost recovery laws were enacted to shift the substantial economic risks of such projects from stockholders to ratepayers. I’d love to know what their shareholders think now about carrying that load on equity stakeholders for such an extended period.

- Severance, who is a practicing CPA, co-author of The Economics of Nuclear and Coal Power (Praeger 1976)

What do you get when you buy a nuke?
You get a lot of delays and rate increases.
And you catch the flu if the utility sneezes.
I’ll never buy a nuke again.
I’ll never buy a nuke again.

- from climateprogress. 5 May 2009.

Solar stove from used cds

- from instructables

Growing Himalayan Glaciers

Among legendary peaks of Mt. Everest like K2 and Nanga Parbat, glaciers with a penthouse view of the world are growing, and have been for almost three decades.

“These are the biggest mid-latitude glaciers in the world,” John Shroder of the University of Nebraska-Omaha said. “And all of them are either holding still, or advancing.”

When Shroder and a team of researchers examined satellite imagery of the region’s glaciers dating back to 1960, they found that 87 glaciers had surged forward during that time, sliding down into lower elevations. An analysis of gravity signatures in the region also suggests the glaciers are growing in mass, and have been since at least 1980.

The team’s work will be published in a forthcoming issue of Annals of Glaciology.

Surging glaciers are common and do not necessarily mean a glacier is growing in overall size. But the fact that dozens of them have all surged in the same region hints that larger climate forces are at work.

“It looks like it’s the Westerlies,” Shroder said, referring to strong jets of wind that pour from west to east in a belt around the planet. Though he can’t say for certain, the winds appear to be carrying more moisture from the warming Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea eastward.

If that’s true, some of the moisture would fall into the region around the Caspian Sea. But as the winds rise into Karakoram’s frigid heights, any remaining water would come down as snow, feeding the glaciers.

“We will see regional patterns like this developing as climate change alters precipitation,” said Andrew Fountain of Portland State University in Oregon.

Fountain said that similar trends were evident in some Scandinavian glaciers during the 1990s, which benefited from increased storminess and precipitation coming off the North Atlantic Ocean. Researchers have also found that glaciers on California’s Mt. Shasta have been growing for decades. And glacier recession has been blunted in the mountains of Oregon and Washington state because of increased moisture from the warming Pacific Ocean.

In the Karakorams, the uptick in glacier mass has come with a welcomed perk. The mighty Indus River, which flows out of China and nourishes northern India and much of Pakistan has experienced an increase in discharge.

But it’s not likely to last.

“As temperatures continue increasing, they will overtake additional mass provided by snow,” Fountain said. “The freezing level will keep rising, and glaciers will melt.”

- from discovery. 5 May 2009.

Leaked communication from the Finnish nuclear regulator STUK

This leaked communication between the Finnish nuclear regulator STUK and the constructor of Olkiluoto AREVA has revealed that there are severe problems with designing the control systems of the world’s largest, prototype nuclear reactor, the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR).

Helsinki, December 9, 2008

Anne Lauvergeon
Chief Executive Officer
AREVA
33, rue La Fayette
F-75442 Paris Cedex 09

Dear Mrs. Lauvergeon,

With this letter I want to express my great concern on the lack of progress in the design of Olkiluoto 3 NPP automation.

The construction of Olkiluoto 3 plant seems to proceed generally well but I cannot see real progress being made in the design of the control and protection systems. Without a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety, and is consistently and transparently derived from the concept presented as an annex to the construction license application, I see no possibility to approve these important systems for installation. This would mean that the construction will come to a halt and it is not possible to start commissioning tests.

I expressed my concern on this already in spring 2008, in a meeting with Mr. Xavier Jacob and TVO’s management. After that Areva organised a workshop at professional level in Erlangen on April 23-25, 2008. The goal of the workshop was to clarify the open technical issues. I was told afterwards that it was a successful event where our concerns were conveyed to your experts and were well understood by them. It was expecially encouraging to hear that after the workshop a group led by an expert of high repute, Dr. Graf, was given a task to make sure that the issues be addressed promptly.

Since then there have been several meetings among our experts but we have not seen expected progress in the work on Areva side. The systems with highest safety importance are to be designed by Areva NP SAS but unfortunately the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons who speak in the expert meetings on behalf of that organisation prevent to make progress in resolving the concerns. Therefore, evident design errors are not corrected and we are not receiving design documentation with adequate information and verifiable design requirements. This is unfortunate because I am convinced that within your organisation there is enough competence to resolve all open issues. I wonder how this competence is actually being used in this project and whether an input by Dr. Graf and his group has been actually utilised.

I sincerely hope you could initiate some action in this area, in order to ensure bringing the construction of Olkiluoto 3 to a successful end.

With my best regards,

Jukka Laaksonen
Director General, STUK

- from greenpeace

Cheaper Solar Concentrators

Skyline Solar, a startup that today announced its existence to the world, has developed a cheaper way to harvest energy from the sun. The company’s solar panels concentrate sunlight onto a small area, reducing the amount of expensive semiconductor material needed to generate electricity.

Skyline Solar has raised $24.6 million to date and has been awarded $3 million by the Department of Energy to speed up production. It has also installed a pilot power plant that can produce 24 kilowatts of electricity, and has started production of its solar panels with the goal of selling them later this year. They are designed for commercial installations in the 1-to-10-megawatt range, such as on food-processing and water-treatment facilities at the edges of cities or in rural areas.

The startup isn’t the first company to attempt to reduce costs by concentrating sunlight onto smaller solar cells. But Skyline Solar says that it can better compete with other energy sources by combining two technologies that can be produced in high volume using existing equipment and that have been demonstrated in the field for decades: conventional silicon solar cells and reflective parabolic troughs, which are used now in solar thermal plants. In these thermal plants, the long, curved troughs concentrate light on tubes, heating up a fluid inside them that, in turn, is used to drive power-generating turbines. Skyline Solar has replaced those tubes with narrow solar panels, adding a heat sink to keep them from getting too hot. The troughs concentrate the light by about a factor of 10, increasing the power output of the panels by about the same amount as conventional solar panels without concentrators. (To compensate for the increased power output, the company has incorporated larger electrical contacts into the panels.)

- from technologyreview

The guilty secrets of palm oil

A fisherman surveys the scene as he steers his boat alongside a recently cleared area of forest

It’s an invisible ingredient, really, palm oil. You won’t find it listed on your margarine, your bread, your biscuits or your KitKat. It’s there though, under “vegetable oil”. And its impact, 7,000 miles away, is very visible indeed.

The wildlife-rich forests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being chain-sawed to make way for palm-oil plantations. Thirty square miles are felled daily in a burst of habitat destruction that is taking place on a scale and speed almost unimaginable in the West.

When the rainforests disappear almost all of the wildlife – including the orangutans, tigers, sun bears, bearded pigs and other endangered species – and indigenous people go. In their place come palm-oil plantations stretching for mile after mile, producing cheap oil – the cheapest cooking oil in the world – for everyday food.

Until now, the best estimate of the number of leading supermarket products containing palm oil (Elaeis guineensis) has been one in 10, the figure quoted by Friends of the Earth in its 2005 report, “The Oil for Apes Scandal”. After a two-month investigation, The Independent has established that palm oil is used in far greater quantities. We can reveal for the first time that it is confirmed or suspected in 43 of Britain’s 100 bestselling grocery brands (see box, right), representing £6bn of the UK’s £16bn annual shopping basket for top brands. If you strip out drinks, pet food and household goods, the picture is starker still: 32 out of 62 of Britain’s top foods contain this tree-felling, wildlife-wrecking ingredient.

It’s in the top three loaves – Warburtons, Hovis, and Kingsmill – and the bestselling margarines Flora and Clover. It’s in Special K, Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, Mr Kipling Cakes, McVitie’s Digestives and Goodfella’s pizza. It’s in KitKat, Galaxy, Dairy Milk and Wrigley’s chewing gum. It’s in Persil washing powder, Comfort fabric softener and Dove soap. It’s also in plenty of famous brands that aren’t in the top 100, such as Milkybar, Jordan’s Country Crisp and Utterly Butterly. And it’s almost certainly in thousands of supermarket own brands. Yet none of these manufacturers can prove their supply is “sustainable”.

What, then, is “unsustainable” palm oil? Step one: log a forest and remove the most valuable species for furniture. Step two: chainsaw or burn the remaining wood releasing huge quantities of greenhouse gas. Step three: plant a palm-oil plantation. Step four: make oil from the fruit and kernels. Step five: add it to biscuits, chocolate, margarine, soaps, moisturisers and washing powder. At breakfast, when millions of us are munching toast, we’re eating a small slice of the rainforest.

These rainforests are honeypots for flora and fauna, among the most biodiverse places on Earth. Consider the figures. Sumatra – the size of Spain, owned by Indonesia – has 465 species of bird, 194 species of mammal, 217 species of reptile, 272 species of freshwater fish, and an estimated 10,000 species of plant. Borneo – the size of Turkey and shared between Indonesia and Malaysia – is even richer: 420 birds, 210 mammals, 254 reptiles, 368 freshwater fish and around 15,000 plants.

All these species evolved to live in this unique forest environment. The Sumatran rhino is the smallest, hairiest and most endangered in the world; the Sumatran tiger is the smallest tiger. The black sun bear, with its U-shaped patch of white fur under its chin, is the smallest bear. Some of them are curious in the extreme: the bug-eyed western tarsier; the striped rabbit; the marled cat; and the tree-jumping clouded leopard, which feasts on pygmy squirrels and long-tailed porcupines.

Of all the animals, though, the most famous by far is the orangutan (or “man of the jungle”). With its orange hair and long arms, the orangutan is one of our planet’s most unusual creatures. And one of the smartest, too. The Dutch anthropologist Carel van Schaik found that orangutans could perform tasks which were well beyond chimpanzees, such as making rain hats and leakproof roofs for their nests.

The primatologist Dr Willie Smits estimates that orangutans can distinguish between 1,000 different plants, knowing which ones are edible, which are poisonous, and which cure headaches. In her book Thinkers of the Jungle, the psychology professor Anne Russon recalled that one orangutan keeper took three days to solve the mystery of who’d been stealing from the fridge. It turned out that an orangutan had been using a paperclip to pick the lock of its cage, then hiding the paperclip under its tongue.

Along with chimpanzees, gorillas and bonobos, orangutans are great apes, sharing 97 per cent of their DNA with humans, having split from us a mere 13 million years ago. They exist only in these forests of Borneo and Sumatra, and it is their arboreal nature that leaves them so vulnerable to deforestation. Between 2004 and 2008, according to the US Great Ape Trust, the orangutan population fell by 10 per cent (to 49,600) on Borneo and by 14 per cent (to 6,600) on Sumatra. As the author Serge Wich warned: “Unless extraordinary efforts are made soon, it could become the first great-ape species to go extinct.”

Indonesia is trying to crack down on illegal foresting, but corruption is rife hundreds of miles from Jakarta. Satellite pictures show logging has encroached on 90 per cent of Borneo’s national parks – and according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP): “New estimates suggest 98 per cent of [Indonesia's] forest may be destroyed by 2022, the lowland forest much sooner.”

In its own way, palm oil is a wonder plant. Astonishingly productive, its annual yield is 3.6 tonnes a hectare compared with half a tonne for soy or rapeseed. Originally found in West Africa, palm oil is uniquely “fractionable” when cooked, meaning its properties can be easily separated for different products. Although high in artery-clogging saturated fat, it is healthier than hydrogenated fats. For manufacturers, there is another significant benefit. At £400 a tonne, it is cheaper than soy, rapeseed or sunflower.

Some 38m tonnes of palm oil are produced globally, about 75 per cent in Malaysia and Indonesia. Borneo’s 11,000 square miles of plantations produce 10m tonnes a year while Sumatra’s 14,000 square miles yield 13m tonnes.

Since 1990, the amount of land used for palm-oil production has increased by 43 per cent. Demand is rising at between six and 10 per cent a year. China’s billion-plus population is the biggest consumer, importing 18 per cent of global supply. About 16 per cent arrives in the EU.

In the UK, almost every major food manufacturer uses palm oil, among them Kellogg’s, Cadbury, Mars, Kraft, Unilever, Premier Foods, Northern Foods and Associated British Foods (ABF). Companies typically say they are working to source sustainable supplies – and insist their use is “small”, “very small” or “minute”.

The US household giant Procter & Gamble, which uses palm oil in detergents, shampoos and soaps, says: “P&G uses very little palm oil – about 1 per cent of a worldwide production of palm and its derivatives.” One per cent of global production is 380,000 tonnes a year. P&G says it hopes to source a sustainable supply by 2015 – six years’ time.

Right now no multinational can vouch that its supply is sustainable. The Anglo-Dutch household giant Unilever, the world’s biggest user of palm oil, is swallowing up 1.6m tonnes a year, 4 per cent of global supply. It admits the product causes huge damage, but believes it has a solution. Together with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), Unilever set up the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2004. For its first four years – to the frustration of green groups – the RSPO talked, devising eight principles and 39 practical criteria designed to protect native peoples, plantation workers, small farmers and wildlife.

The best plantations can obtain RSPO certification for sustainability – but only 4 per cent of global supply (1.5m tonnes) is currently certified sustainable. The first shipment arrived in Rotterdam last November and costs about 35 per cent more than normal supplies. Another scheme, Green Palm, is already bringing prices for RSPO supplies down further, adding just 5 per cent to the cost.

Unilever has publicly committed to sourcing only certified palm oil by 2015. Premier Foods has a date of 2011, United Biscuits 2012. Most companies, however, including Cadbury, Kellogg’s, Nestlé, Mars and Heinz, have given no commitment to switch to an RSPO-certified supply. They merely say that their suppliers are members.

In its “Cooking the Climate” report, Greenpeace calculated that the burning of South-east Asia’s peat forests – largely for palm-oil plantations – spewed 1.8bn tonnes of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere: 4 per cent of global climate-change emissions from 0.1 per cent of Earth’s land. According to Greenpeace forest campaigner James Turner, “The destruction of these forests is a really serious cause of climate change, but some companies are still trying to look the other way. It’s time for them to cancel contracts with the worst suppliers, because purchasing power is a highly effective tool in changing this industry.”

Deforestation causes 18 per cent of Co2 emissions, according to British government figures – a key element in the rising temperatures that in coming decades will alter our world for ever. No one can be exactly sure what climate change will bring but, in Britain, we can expect more flooding and winter gales, drier summers, water shortages, and more food poisoning and skin cancer. The sea will not just sweep over Bangladesh and the Maldives, but possibly threaten low-lying parts of Britain, such as London, too. Meanwhile, millions of people in developing countries with failing agriculture could migrate to northern Europe.

The wealthy Western countries who have already felled their own forests (woods once covered Britain from Cornwall to Caithness) may have to pay more and more to protect those that remain in other parts of the world. At the Copenhagen summit in December, Britain and other countries will press for REDD (Reducing Emission from Deforestation and Degradation) – essentially a scheme for funding jungles in developing countries.

In the meantime, forest campaigners hope that big companies will come under increasing scrutiny over palm oil. The Unilever-backed RSPO wants them to commit to a sustainable supply. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace say palm-oil use should be reduced or phased out altogether. A few have already done so – PepsiCo, for instance, is phasing out palm oil from its remaining two products. United Biscuits says it has reduced palm oil in Digestives by 65 per cent and in McCoys by 76 per cent since 2005.

Palm oil facts

90 per cent of Sumatra’s orangutan population has disappeared since 1900. They now face extinction
90 per cent of wildlife disappears when the forest is replaced by palm, creating a biological desert
98 per cent of Indonesia’s forests may be destroyed by 2022 according to the United Nations
43 of Britain’s 100 top grocery brands contain or are thought to contain palm oil

- from independent. 2 May 2009

Nisoor Square massacre

The indictment is built largely around the testimony of a sixth Blackwater operative who has already pleaded guilty to two charges as part of an agreement to testify against his colleagues. The guard, Jeremy Ridgeway, described how he and the other Blackwater operatives used automatic rifles and grenade launchers to fire on cars, on houses, a traffic officer and a girls’ school.

The indictments represent the first time in more than five years of the Iraq occupation that the Justice Department has brought criminal charges against armed private contractors for crimes committed against Iraqis. Blackwater, as a company, faces no charges in the case.

This is very significant. The fact is that no armed contractors have ever been prosecuted under any legal system, not under Iraqi law, not under US military law and not under civilian law. The Nisoor Square massacre, was the single greatest massacre committed by private US government forces in Iraq during five years of the occupation. So the fact that these men who are alleged to be responsible for that are being criminally prosecuted and could potentially face a mandatory minimum of thirty years in jail, if they’re convicted, is significant.

However, Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater; Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State; George Bush, the President—they’re not being held responsible for this. And the fact is that, once again, the US government is rolling out this “bad apples” narrative to describe the actions of Blackwater and saying that the company as a whole is a good company, a responsible company, but just these few guys did some bad things. And the fact is that this is a five-year pattern of misconduct and this kind of activity by Blackwater forces. What we’re going to see is a token prosecution of a handful of Blackwater guys, when it’s the system of the radical privatization of war that needs to be taken on forcefully.

the first victims that day, shortly after noon on September 16th, 2007, were a young Iraqi medical student named Ahmed Haitham al-Rubaye and his mother Mehasin. And the Blackwater guys have said that they believed that their car posed some kind of a threat or was potentially a suicide bomber, and they shot Ahmed Haitham al-Rubaye in his head as he drove that car and then launched some kind of a projectile at the vehicle, blowing it up and killing his mother Mehasin inside. Blackwater forces have said that it was a defensive measure.

But the bottom line here, is that the company is not going to be held accountable, except lawsuits like that brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, where they are suing Blackwater as a company, Erik Prince as an individual, trying to hold them accountable for the conduct of the men on the ground. These guys, like at Abu Ghraib, will take the fall for an entire system, and the reality is that they are five bad actors in a filthy, rotten system that needs to be confronted head on.

There’s no greater symbol of the lack of true change in US foreign policy than Barack Obama retaining the man that George W. Bush chose to be the Defense Secretary at the Pentagon. this is a kettle of hawks that have been assembled in the White House to run US foreign policy. Jim Jones and his connections to Chevron and Boeing. Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, it’s a very hawkish cabinet.

On the Blackwater issue, though, Gates, obviously has been much, much better than Donald Rumsfeld, in the sense that he has realized that these contractors are out of control and pose, a threat to US troops and Iraqi civilians alike. And the issue that Gates has zeroed in on is the fact that these Blackwater forces are paid much more than regular US soldiers and that they’re not held accountable under the same legal system.

Barack Obama does not have a great position on Blackwater and other private forces. In fact, he says that he cannot and will not rule out using them in Iraq. He has also said that there’s going to be a continued role for contractors in the private war industry, in the US national security apparatus.

Interestingly, Hillary Clinton was only the second person to sign onto legislation to ban Blackwater. As Secretary of State, that would technically be her area of operations. So it’s going to be interesting to see if Hillary Clinton follows through and actually tries to implement some kind of a ban, which she’s on paper supporting.

Jeremy Scahill talking with Amy Goodman.

Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

- from democracynow. 9 Dec 2008.

Sweden: second-largest weapons exporter per capita in the world

Institutions like the Nobel Prize have helped link Sweden’s international reputation to peace and reconciliation. But few people know Sweden is also one of the world’s top exporters of weapons. Sweden is among the world’s top arms exporters in per capita terms. Its clients include the United States and Britain, with shipments more than doubling since 2000.

Alfred Nobel established Bofors company in Karlskoga for the weapons industry. One of its group is now owned by British Aerospace (BAE), Europe’s biggest weapons company. And the other group went into Saab, Bofors Dynamics, which is another company owned by—Swedish-owned, by Saab. General Motors owns Saab in the United States, the automaker, and Ford owns Volvo, another Swedish company. Saab is Sweden’s biggest weapons manufacturer.

There are protest against weapon export from sweden. Apart from more traditional political methods activists of ofog and avrusta do disarmament actions too. Using an ordinary hammer, starts the disarmaments by disabling parts of weapons or weapons, so that they can’t be used to kill or hurt anybody.

Swedish citizens doesn’t know about Sweden being one of the top ten largest arms producers in the world. But there’s also these laws that permit the weapons export and stop people from protesting against it, because then they will get fines and be put into prison.

A lot of people feel that quite radical action needs to be taken, also with this government, because there will be, next year probably, a new proposal for new regulations, guidelines for the weapons export, which then risks to be much more liberal than those that we have today. So it’s important to act at this moment.

Annika Spalde and Cattis Laska is going to trial and will be sentenced to prison. Its funny to know that at the time of the celebration of the Nobel Peace Prize in honor of Alfred Nobel peace activists of Sweden are going to prison.

Annika Spalde and Cattis Laska talking with Amy Goodman

Annika Spalde, Activist with the Avrusta (“disarm” in Swedish), which aims to stop Swedish arms exports to countries violating human rights.

Cattis Laska, Activist with the Swedish Christian peace network, Ofog.

- from democracynow. 9 Dec 2008

Workers gettig attension in US

For the past six days, hundreds of union workers have refused to leave the plant, staging a factory sit-in seldom seen in this country since the 1930s. The workers say they won’t leave until the factory is reopened or they receive severance pay and accrued vacation time. The factory was closed last week after the factory owners said Bank of America cut off the company’s line of credit. On Monday, Governor Blagojevich ordered state agencies to stop doing business with Bank of America until it uses some of its federal bailout money to keep the factory open.

On Tuesday, the Republic Windows & Doors factory won a victory: Bank of America offered loans to the firm to resolve the pay dispute. In a statement, the bank said it was “prepared to provide a limited amount of additional loans to Republic to help fund a comprehensive resolution of Employee Claims.” Labor organizers say the sit-in will continue until a resolution is reached. The factory sit-in has attracted attention and renewed a discussion about the federal government’s bailout of the banking industry. On Sunday, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson met with the laid-off workers.

the plant has become a magnet now for the labor and progressive movement from around the city and actually from the Midwest, as people come to visit and to show support, bring supplies to the workers, food, a truckload on Monday night of toys that were brought for the workers for their children for Christmas.

And it’s gotten enormous attention in the media, both nationwide and here, a sympathetic criticism, for the most part, as—because not only Bank of America, but also JPMorgan Chase—it hasn’t gotten as much attention, but JPMorgan Chase invested several million dollars in the plant in early 2007 and actually had a member on the board of directors until just this past summer. So two of the major banks that have benefited from the federal bailout have been—have connections and involvement with this plant.

Raul Flores said:
When we get out of the work on Friday, we went home. When we came back on Monday, one whole line of production was gone. All the machines, everything was gone. So we said, if this time we get out of the building, on Monday, when we come to pick up our checks, nothing’s going to be here.

they just told us last Tuesday that they will now shut down the company. And on Friday, when we got there, they just told us that there were no money for us, that our vacation that we already earned, that we’re not going to get paid for that. So we said, “That’s our money. We already worked for that money. They still owe us a week of work.” So we decided to stay, because we say, “That’s our money. We worked for that money. We’re here to make our jobs. We’re not going to steal nothing from nobody. We’re just here to work.”

one of the great things about this struggle is how people all over the country have taken it on as their own. And so, the entire labor movement here in Chicago organized a protest for today at noon downtown, outside of the bank. There’s another protest—there are other protests around the country happening, as well.

- from democracynow. 10 Dec 2008.

Sweden: welfare state

the reasons for Sweden’s reputation as a progressive paradise, the strongest labor movement in the world with 87 percent of workers unionized, creating over many decades the strongest welfare state, the one that on the UN Human Poverty Index has the least poverty in the world. And then, what we’ve seen over the last twenty years, but particularly since the 2006 election, is a move away from all of that.

After being elected, Fredrik Reinfeldt, one of his first major visits abroad was to George Bush in the White House, this in spite of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, a visit that many people thought shouldn’t have happened, his coalition then getting—bringing over Karl Rove for advice and support—Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush’s electoral victories.

They brought Karl Rove this past summer. Because he can offer good advice on how to win the 2010 election. According to his website, it’s his only foreign consulting, for the Moderate Party of Sweden.

The first piece to notice is really in the electoral campaign, when he tried very hard to appeal to working-class voters, described his party as the new workers’ party. And after one speech, he was asked by a journalist if it wasn’t a speech inspired by Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” And he answered that it was, to some degree. Bush was so successful at winning the white working class, especially in 2004, where white working-class voters favored him by 23 percent. Reinfeldt brought over only a small percent of working-class voters to his coalition, but enough to tip the balance.

And then, we have a real kind of silent war on the labor movement, where it’s been made much more expensive to be part of a union, where the legal prerogatives of unions have been made much less. dramatic change in the tax system, abolishing the inheritance tax and property tax—most property taxes, cutbacks in social welfare institutions, some changes that will be very hard for future regimes to undo.

That was in his book, The Sleeping People, from 1993, where he wrote “We do not want to see a society where people starve, but beyond that, no particular standard should be guaranteed by tax money.” And then he was asked on television after the book’s publication what he meant by that, and he said the boundary for social support should be the starvation boundary. That’s, of course, not his policy now, but it shows the danger of electing someone who is a great admirer of Margaret Thatcher to the highest post in the land.

As the United States deals with greater unemployment, the crisis of healthcare. Sweden has a social welfare system where healthcare is free in Sweden.

Many small changes to, in some way, make it harder for the general welfare state to function—for example, creating—allowing the creation of a private children’s hospital in Stockholm only for paying customers and people.

who will pay the full cost of their children’s care, or people who have private insurance to do that. What this will do is start to create this kind of thing, will start to create groups of middle-class people who no longer have such a stake in the general welfare system, because they feel, well, I’m buying it anyway privately, and that will gradually erode middle-class support for the general welfare system that up to now has had very high levels of support from the middle class.

Health insurance companies are very, very eager for this business. And it’s a tremendous irony that, just at a moment when Americans, some of them discussing Michael Moore’s film Sicko, see the very unethical behavior of different kinds of health insurance and health management companies, many of those same companies are getting the opportunity to buy pieces of Swedish healthcare clinics, parts of hospitals—according to a new law, even entire university hospitals can be sold out to private companies—so that as Americans have mostly become skeptical of these companies, they’re being invited to Sweden to do damage here.

Brian Palmer talking with Amy Goodman

Brian Palmer, professor of social anthropology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and a former professor at Harvard University. He got Levinson Prize for teaching.

- from democracynow. 9 Dec 2008.

Mercury Emissions

A new landmark study documents for the first time the process in which increased mercury emissions from human sources across the globe, and in particular from Asia, make their way into the North Pacific Ocean and as a result contaminate tuna and other seafood. Because much of the mercury that enters the North Pacific comes from the atmosphere, scientists have predicted an additional 50 percent increase in mercury in the Pacific by 2050 if mercury emission rates continue as projected.

Water sampling cited in the study shows that mercury levels in 2006 were approximately 30 percent higher than those measured in the mid-1990s. This study documents for the first time the formation of methylmercury in the North Pacific Ocean. It shows that methylmercury is produced in mid-depth ocean waters by processes linked to the “ocean rain.” Algae, which are produced in sunlit waters near the surface, die quickly and “rain” downward to greater water depths. At depth, the settling algae are decomposed by bacteria and the interaction of this decomposition process in the presence of mercury results in the formation of methylmercury. Many steps up the food chain later, predators like tuna receive methylmercury from the fish they consume.

In the United States, about 40 percent of all human exposure to mercury is from tuna harvested in the Pacific Ocean, according to Elsie Sunderland, a coauthor of the study. Methylmercury is a highly toxic form of mercury that rapidly accumulates in the food chain to levels that can cause serious health concerns for those who consume the seafood. Pregnant women who consume mercury can pass on life-long developmental effects to their children. That is why in 2004 EPA and FDA issued the landmark Joint Guidance on the Consumption of Fish specifically targeted towards pregnant women and nursing mothers. Previous studies show that 75 percent of human exposure worldwide to mercury is from the consumption of marine fish and shell fish.

- from sciencedaily

Crude Impact

Crude Impact is a 2006 film written and directed by James Jandak Wood. It is a documentary about the effect of fossil fuels on issues such as global warming, the environmental crisis, society and the questionable practices of oil companies

The film was shown at the Cleveland International Film Festival in 2007.

Science works with testable ideas

For an idea to be testable, it must logically generate specific expectations — in other words, a set of observations that we could expect to make if the idea were true and a set of observations that would be inconsistent with the idea and lead you to believe that it is not true.

For example, consider the idea that a sparrow’s song is genetically encoded and is unaffected by the environment in which it is raised, in comparison to the idea that a sparrow learns the song it hears as a baby. Logical reasoning about this example leads to a specific set of expectations. If the sparrow’s song were indeed genetically encoded, we would expect that a sparrow raised in the nest of a different species would grow up to sing a sparrow song like any other member of its own species. But if, instead, the sparrow’s song were learned as a chick, raising a sparrow in the nest of another species should produce a sparrow that sings a non-sparrow song. Because they generate different expected observations, these ideas are testable. A scientific idea may require a lot of reasoning to work out an appropriate test, may be difficult to test, may require the development of new technological tools to test, or may require one to make independently testable assumptions to test — but to be scientific, an idea must be testable, somehow, someway.

If an explanation is equally compatible with all possible observations, then it is not testable and hence, not within the reach of science. This is frequently the case with ideas about supernatural entities. For example, consider the idea that an all-powerful supernatural being controls our actions. Is there anything we could do to test that idea? No. Because this supernatural being is all-powerful, anything we observe could be chalked up to the whim of that being. Or not. The point is that we can’t use the tools of science to gather any information about whether or not this being exists — so such an idea is outside the realm of science.

A SCIENCE PROTOTYPE: RUTHERFORD AND THE ATOM

Before 1910, Ernest Rutherford and many other scientists had the idea that the positive charge and the mass of an atom were evenly distributed throughout the whole atom, with electrons scattered throughout. You can imagine this model of the atom as a loosely packed snowball (the positive mass of the atom) with a few tiny grains of sand (the electrons) scattered throughout. The idea that atoms are arranged in this way can be tested by firing an alpha particle beam through a piece of gold foil. If the idea were correct, then the positive mass in the gold foil would be relatively diffuse (the loosely packed snow) and would allow the alpha particles to pass through the foil with only minor scattering.

- from berkeley

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Does High Speed Rail is a solution?

There is something quite seductive about speed. It sounds good, and economists cling to the misleading idea that saving time saves money and produces an economic bonus that the whole of society can share. The supporters of HSR argue that it will increase the capacity of the rail system to move people and freight, stimulate the economy, steal passengers from domestic aviation and reduce greenhouse gases.

High-speed rail will indeed increase capacity, especially if it proceeds on German and French models and produces new lines across open countryside. But what is not addressed is why we need the increased capacity, and whether or not this is the right way to go about it.

Capacity is routinely increased in mainland Europe by using double-decker trains for passenger travel. Trains in and out of Zurich or Paris are frequently double-decked and give passengers a non-cattle truck ride that we can only dream about in south-east England or on Manchester-bound platforms at Leeds railway station at 5pm on a weekday. Capacity can be increased by running night passenger trains, as is common in Germany.

We could even have a policy about developing strongly independent cities, such as those in Germany. The “need” to travel to London is a result of decades of public and private policy and cash to centralise functions there and to avoid the idea that Newcastle upon Tyne, Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool could operate as high-level attractive financial, cultural, corporate HQ and media centres, just as Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg do in Germany. We do need to move more freight around the UK by means other than road, but the links with HSR and better rail opportunities for freight are tenuous. Alternatives to HSR include reopening lines closed in the 1960s for normal rail running, using coastal shipping, inland waterways and even planning our industrial and logistic sites so that they were located near to ports, waterways and rail logistic centres.

The HSR plan is a large and expensive sledgehammer to crack a modestly sized nut. We could stimulate the economy by building 1,000 miles of HSR, but the sums would not stack up in terms of how many jobs this would create per £100,000 spent.

If we really want to create jobs in all local economies, rather than drain them away along a very fast railway line, we could insulate 20m homes; make every house a mini-power station to generate and export its own electricity; sort out extremely poor quality commuter railway lines around all our cities; improve inter-regional rail links; and build 10,000 kms of segregated bike paths to connect every school, hospital, employment site and public building to every residential area.

These projects would deliver real jobs on a large scale in every city region and local authority, but do not have the high-speed sexiness of new railway lines. HSR is promoted as something that can sort out nasty carbon-producing aircraft on domestic routes. It has done this on the Paris-Lyon and Madrid-Seville lines, but this ability to trash a single air route should not be interpreted as something than can dent the growth of air travel. Germany has one of the largest HSR systems in the world, yet has seen an explosion in internal air travel.

HSR does not reduce the fuel consumption of domestic aviation or reduce annual carbon emissions from aircraft.And it produces twice as much CO2 per passenger kilometre as a non-high speed train. If we are serious about reducing our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, we should not move towards higher speed, more carbon intensive forms of transport and a policy of increasing the mass of travel.

Supporters of HSR talk about a total bill of £11bn from public funds. This is likely to be a considerable underestimate, but even if correct it is a huge commitment to something regressive. HSR is used by high-income passengers, and the £11bn would be a public investment from all taxpayers to encourage wealthy individuals to travel to and from London more often and at a higher speed. This is far less important than sorting out local travel in all cities, commuter travel around all cities, and inter-regional travel.

Switzerland offers a vision of what a rail system in the UK could look like if it celebrated all our cities, reflected the need to offer attractive rail services to all social and income groups, and set out to avoid cattle-truck conditions. The double-decker trains running from Zurich to Basle 60 times a day offer comfort, reliability, and a pleasant journey on a major commuter route.

This could be the future on the Liverpool-Manchester-Leeds route, and on many routes in the south-east of England, but there appears to be no well-oiled machine lobbying for these passengers.

This is an occasion when a referendum would be useful. Hands up those in favour of providing an £11bn subsidy from taxpayers for very rich people to travel very quickly to London – and hands up those who would prefer something like the Swiss have.

• John Whitelegg is a research leader at the Stockholm Environment Institute, York University

- from guardian. 29 Apr 2009.

Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq

The pact recently approved by the Iraqi cabinet that allows 150,000 US troops to stay in Iraq ’til 2011 could have a significant impact on the role of private military contractors deployed in the war. According to the Wall Street Journal, the draft Status of Forces Agreement, known as SOFA, appears to end immunity from local Iraqi law for private military contractors. If the pact is approved by the Iraqi parliament, contractors would fall under the jurisdiction of Iraqi courts and would be subject to prosecution.

This comes as top Justice Department prosecutors are reportedly reviewing a draft indictment against six Blackwater security guards who opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square more than a year ago, killing seventeen Iraqi civilians. The Associated Press reports senior Justice Department officials are said to be considering manslaughter and assault charges against the guards. The indictments would mark the first time armed private contractors from the United States face justice.

Meanwhile, the State Department is reportedly preparing to hit Blackwater with a multi-million-dollar fine for allegedly shipping as many as 900 automatic weapons to Iraq without the required permits.

From the beginning, this case has been extremely problematic. When the Nisour Square shootings occurred, the FBI took two weeks before it arrived in Iraq to investigate the case. There was limited immunity that was granted to some of the Blackwater contractors in the immediate aftermath by the State Department. And then, the larger question is, exactly how do you prosecute these cases? Under what law? It’s never been clear exactly what law applies to private security contractors in Iraq. That’s the biggest problem.

The Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which would be the law under which these guys would be prosecuted, requires the prosecution to take place in the state in which the person who’s accused resides. So, if in fact we’re talking about six separate indictments, we could be talking about six separate prosecutions occurring in six different states. And then, of course, there are issues with evidence. There are issues with exactly what the charges are going to be. There are questions of interviews and witnesses and how exactly do you do this. So it’s extremely problematic.

STEVE FAINARU: “Big boy rules” is an expression that I first heard when I was reporting on a story in which a private contractor who worked for a company called Triple Canopy, which shares a State Department contract with Blackwater, one of their contractors announced to three of his colleagues, who were traveling with him that day, that he really wanted to shoot someone. And that day, according to these three colleagues, they were traveling on the airport road in Baghdad, and while they were passing a civilian taxi, this contractor, according to these three guys, fired into the windshield of this passing civilian taxi. When that happened, there was no real legal mechanism by which to deal with the situation. And as I was reporting the case, I heard from other contractors that they used this expression “big boy rules.” And what it really meant was that there were no rules for private security contractors in Iraq, and they operated under basically their own system of justice.

When you look at the Geneva Conventions and the definition of “mercenaries,” we’re talking about people who are not part of the armed force that’s participating in the conflict. They are people who are—their primary motivation is money. They’re being paid to take place in—to take part in hostilities. And so, the practice clearly falls under that definition.

The term “private security contractors” never really has done justice to exactly what the scope of what’s going on in Iraq with these people. We’re talking about tens of thousands of hired guns who are running around Iraq in a war zone. They are being fired upon. They’re returning fire. They’re killing people, and they’re being killed. And the term “private security contractor,” it could apply to anybody. It could apply to a Brink’s guard. It could apply to somebody who’s standing in front of a 7-Eleven. it obfuscated. it obscured the reality of what was happening.

while I was working for the Washington Post, we wanted to find out what this culture was and why these people were there, who they were. And so, I embedded with a private security company called Crescent Security Group that operated out of Kuwait City. I traveled into Iraq with these people. We were—their primary mission was to protect supply convoys on Iraq’s main highway. And so, I traveled into Iraq. We traveled up to Nasiriyah, and then we traveled back to the Iraq-Kuwait border. I interviewed them. I found out what they were about.

And one of the things that was most striking about this company was—you know, in the book, I call it basically the Kmart of private security, where, you know, if you have Blackwater sort of at the high end of the security spectrum—traveling in heavily armored vehicles, working for the State Department, paying their contractors $20,000 a month—you had companies like Crescent Security Group, who were paying their contractors $7,000 a month, they had a lot less experience, there were enormous problems with the company.

I came home. Before I had even written my story, the people that I had spent time with were kidnapped on the same highway where we had been traveling. They were missing for sixteen months, and last April their bodies turned up in southern Iraq.

First, their fingers were delivered to the air base in Basra as evidence that—from an informant, that he knew where the bodies were. And then, about a month later, the bodies were delivered to the air base at Basra.

Everybody had their own sort of story about why they should be in Iraq. The primary motivation was money. Everybody was there—that was the number one reason for being there. But when you got sort of beyond that, there were all kinds of other other issues that were in play.

The main character of the book, Jon Cote, had been in the 82nd Airborne, and he had done a tour in Afghanistan and Iraq. And when he got out, he enrolled at the University of Florida to study accounting. He was like the least likely accounting major in the history of accounting. And what he found—when he got out, he found that he just simply could not cope, that his experience in the military had put him in a sort of a place in his life where he just couldn’t adapt to civilian life. He clearly had post-traumatic stress. And so, one of his—his scout leader from the Army offered him a job to make $7,000 a month driving supply convoys—guarding supply convoys in Iraq. And he took the job, just thinking that, you know, this was some way—this was a way for him to get more money for college. He had financial problems. And so, he went back.

He realized very quickly that he had gotten into a situation that he simply was not prepared for. The company that he was working for was corrupt. They were smuggling weapons and liquor back and forth across the Iraq-Kuwait border. They were fabricating military IDs that they were using on their—that they were giving to their Iraqi employees to get onto US military installations. They were traveling in these pickup trucks in, you know, an extremely dangerous environment. And he decided to go home, after a couple of—three months. He decided he had enough and had told his friends and his family that he was planning to go home. But before he could, it was too late.

Other guys, simply thrived on the life. They were adrenaline junkies. They lived for this stuff. There was another guy that I met, John Young, who was forty-four years old. He had been in the Army in the 1980s. When he got out of the Army, he sort of drifted around to different jobs, never really feeling like he was totally content. He tried to reenlist in the military and injured himself during basic training. And so, when this job came along, he did it. And even after nearly getting shot in Baghdad, he still felt like—he said, “This is me. You know, this is what I do.” And I think there were a lot of people like that in Iraq, you know, who were drawn by the opportunity. They were making maybe ten times as much money as they could have made in the United States. They were addicted to the action, and they took the job.

The story of one guy from, Triple Canopy, is chilling. He announced to his three colleagues that he wanted to kill someone, and then he went out on Baghdad’s airport road and fired into the windshield of a taxi. Then they simply drove off.

The car, according to the witnesses, sputtered to a stop on the side of the road. The witnesses saw bullet holes in the windshield. When they got back to the base, there was a lot of confusion about what to do. Ironically, there was a Fijian guy who was on this team who was paid a tenth of what the American contractors who were in the same vehicle were being paid. He went to a Fijian supervisor and told him about what had happened, because he was disgusted. But the Fijian supervisor basically was afraid to go to his American supervisors and tell them what had happened. And so, the other two guys were also not sure what to do. They were afraid to come forward. Finally, after two days, they came forward, and they told the company what had happened. And the company’s response was to fire not only them, but the man who was accused of firing into this taxi.

One of the things I think that case points up is that there was no legal mechanism to pursue it any further. Nor was there any incentive for the company, really, to pursue it any further. The company, Triple Canopy, went to the director of security for the Green Zone and basically told him in a very vague way, what had happened: there was a questionable shooting incident that took place on Baghdad’s airport road. And that’s really basically all they told him. And when I interviewed him, he told me basically that he said to the company, you know, “Look, this is not my job. You know, this is not something that I deal with.” He brought in a JAG officer, and, the case was simply not pursued.

The two guys who were fired ultimately sued in Fairfax County Circuit Court, arguing that had been fired for essentially reporting a criminal act. Triple Canopy argued that the reason they were fired was because they had not reported this incident immediately. A jury upheld the company’s contention that, on technical grounds, they were within every right to fire the two guys who reported the incident, but at the same time the jury condemned the company for what it said was its business practices and the way it conducted its investigation.

One was the enormity of it. When I had been covering the military for fourteen months, and I’d see these guys around. And when I finally—when I started reporting it, you realize that there were hundreds of companies like Blackwater that were running around Iraq. I think the other thing that was really striking was that the Bush administration, because of its failure to provide enough troops, had essentially farmed out the responsibility for deciding who can kill and die for our country to private companies that were there and who had been created simply to make money off the war.

Steve Fainaru, with Amy Goodman.

Steve Fainaru, foreign correspondent for the Washington Post, where he covered the Iraq war from 2004 to 2007. He won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his stories on private military contractors. His new book is Big Boy Rules: America’s Mercenaries Fighting in Iraq.

- from democracynow. 19 Nov 2008.

What is Science

Science as a collective institution aims to produce more and more accurate natural explanations of how the natural world works, what its components are, and how the world got to be the way it is now. Classically, science’s main goal has been building knowledge and understanding, regardless of its potential applications — for example, investigating the chemical reactions that an organic compound undergoes in order to learn about its structure. However, increasingly, scientific research is undertaken with the explicit goal of solving a problem or developing a technology, and along the path to that goal, new knowledge and explanations are constructed. For example, a chemist might try to produce an antimalarial drug synthetically and in the process, discover new methods of forming bonds that can be applied to making other chemicals. Either way (so-called “pure” or “applied” research), science aims to increase our understanding of how the natural world works.

The knowledge that is built by science is always open to question and revision. No scientific idea is ever once-and-for-all “proved.” Why not? Well, science is constantly seeking new evidence, which could reveal problems with our current understandings. Ideas that we fully accept today may be rejected or modified in light of new evidence discovered tomorrow. For example, up until 1938, paleontologists accepted the idea that coelacanths (an ancient fish) went extinct at the time that they last appear in the fossil record — about 80 million years ago. But that year, a live coelacanth was discovered off the coast of South Africa, causing scientists to revise their ideas and begin to investigate how this animal survives in the deep sea. could be revised if warranted by the evidence.

Despite the fact that they are subject to change, scientific ideas are reliable. The ideas that have gained scientific acceptance have done so because they are supported by many lines of evidence. These scientific explanations continually generate expectations that hold true, allowing us to figure out how entities in the natural world are likely to behave (e.g., how likely it is that a child will inherit a particular genetic disease) and how we can harness that understanding to solve problems (e.g., how electricity, wire, glass, and various compounds can be fashioned into a working light bulb). For example, scientific understandings of motion and gases allow us to build airplanes that reliably get us from one airport to the next. Though the knowledge used to design airplanes is technically provisional, time and time again, that knowledge has allowed us to produce airplanes that fly. We have good reason to trust scientific ideas: they work!

A SCIENCE PROTOTYPE: RUTHERFORD AND THE ATOM

Ernest Rutherford’s investigations were aimed at understanding a small, but illuminating, corner of the natural world: the atom. He investigated this world using alpha particles, which are helium atoms stripped of their electrons. Rutherford had found that when a beam of these tiny, positively-charged alpha particles is fired through gold foil, the particles don’t stay on their beeline course, but are deflected (or “scattered”) at different angles. Rutherford wanted to figure out what this might tell him about the layout of an atom.

- from berkeley

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1 Bus = 50 Cars

Swedish advertising company, Acne, put together a rather eye-catching advertising campaign for Flygbussarna, an airport coach bus service, to inspire individual car drivers to take the coach bus instead. An installation made up of 50 wrecked cars resembling a Flygbussarna coach bus was placed next to the highway leading to the Swedish airport. Acne used 50 cars to emphasize that a coach bus can seat up to 50 people whereas, on average, an individual car has only 1.2 people. Consider that with the fact that a coach bus releases no more carbon than 4 cars.

- from inhabitat

Bird death because of wind farms

US wind farms kill about 7,000 birds a year, according to a recent study. Other studies of individual wind farms suggest a higher toll on bats and birds, who crash into towers, blades, power lines and other installations. Estimates from a single wind farm in Altamont, California showed as many as 1,300 birds of prey killed each year – or about three a day.

Such direct threats to wildlife, and concerns for habitats, have increasingly pitted conservationists against the renewable energy industry. A handful of wind power projects in the US have been shelved because of wildlife concerns.

But new radar technology now in use at the Peñascal wind farm in Texas claims to have found a balance between competing environmental concerns – taking action against global warming and protecting wildlife – by protecting migrating birds at times of peak danger.

The 202MW farm, operated by the Spanish firm, Iberdrola Renewables, is the first in the world to use radar systems to enable it to shut down automatically if bad weather hits in peak migration times.

The installation, which opened late last month, uses radar systems originally developed for Nasa and the US Air Force to detect approaching birds from as far as four miles away, analyse weather conditions, and then determine in real time whether they are in danger of flying into the rotating blades.

If they are, the turbines are programmed to shut down, restarting once the birds are safely on their way, said Gary Andrews, the chairman of DeTect, Inc, the Florida company that developed the technology.

The system spots the birds and assesses their altitude, numbers and the visibility. “With all these pieces coming together properly … the turbines will shut down,” said Andrews.

Conservationists however are sceptical of such an easy fix. They argue that wind farms should still be sited away from migration routes in the first place, and that the technology does nothing to solve the problem of installations that disturb bird and animal habitats and nesting grounds.

The Peñascal wind farm is located on the Central Flyway, a main route for migratory birds in the Americas.

Millions of birds funnel through the narrow air corridor during the semiannual migration. A study in the autumn of 2007 found 4,000 birds an hour passing overhead.

In ordinary circumstances, the birds would be thousands of feet above the wind farm, passing the turbines without incident. But that can change dramatically in a sudden storm.

A sudden cold snap, like the legendary Texan “Blue Northern”, can prove fatal for migrating birds, bringing strong head winds and fog. The birds, which typically fly at night, become disoriented and exhausted, elevating the risk they will lose altitude and crash into 400ft wind towers along their route, wildlife experts say.

Conservationists are reserving judgment. “The wind energy industry makes bold claims, and they need to prove them,” said Andrew Kasner, director of bird conservation for Audubon Texas.

- from guardian. 1 May 2009.

Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization

- from climateprogress

Fedora rpm source setup

There are some softwares that are not compatible with Fedora and Gnu’s GPL licenses. Rpms of those packages are available at rpmfusion.org. It can be setup to yum, the package manager using following command

su -c ‘rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm’

Please dont forget to remove those non free packages once it true free versions available.

Construction of the Callaway II suspended

Construction of the Callaway II Nuclear Power Plant has been suspended indefinitely.

The company issued a request for the sponsors of the Construction Work In Progress bill, or CWIP, to withdraw it because the bill does not contain the necessary financial stability Ameren UE says it needs to build the plant.

Right now, energy companies in Missouri aren’t allowed to raise their electricity rates to pay for new construction due to a law passed in 1976 after the first Callaway nuclear plant was built. All construction costs have to be financed by investors, bank loans and other sources.

Those opposed to the bill, which would have allowed electricity rate increases to help pay for the cost of the plant said that it would increase the cost of electricity too much and passes the risk of a failed construction project onto the consumer. Passing the CWIP bill would have allowed Ameren UE to increase its rates to pay for the financing costs of the project.

- from komu. 23 Apr 2009

Passive house

Passive houses are airtight buildings that use heat from appliances and even the occupants’ bodies for warmth. They have thick insulation, are oriented to maximize winter sun and use a heat exchanger to warm outside air that circulates throughout. The result is a house that needs little or no extra energy for heating, even in very cold climates. While they are increasingly popular in Germany and Scandinavia, passive houses have yet to make inroads in the United States. Here is one approach.

- from nytimes

List of liars

On April 23, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times published a story proving conclusively that the so-called Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, knew that they were lying when they ran “an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.”

List of members of the so-called Global Climate Coalition, who tried for so long to mislead us.

* Air Transport Association
* Allegheny Power
* Aluminum Association, Inc.
* American Automobile Manufacturers Association
* American Commercial Barge Line Co.
* American Farm Bureau Federation
* American Forest & Paper Association
* American Highway Users Alliance
* American Iron and Steel Institute
* American Petroleum Institute
* American Portland Cement Alliance
* Amoco
* Association of American Railroads
* Association of International Automobile Manufacturers
* Atlantic Richfield Coal Company
* Baker Refineries
* Bethlehem Steel
* BHP Minerals
* Chamber of Shipping of America
* Chemical Manufacturers Association
* Chevron
* Chrysler Corporation
* Cinergy
* CONRAIL
* Consumers Energy
* Council of Industrial Boiler Owners
* CSX Transportation, Inc.
* Cyprus-Amax
* Dow Chemical Company
* Drummond Company
* Duke Power Company
* DuPont
* Eastman Chemical
* Edison Electric Institute
* ELCON
* ExxonMobil
* Fertilizer Institute
* Ford Motor Company
* General Motors
* Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.
* Greencool
* Hoechst Celanese Chemical Group
* Illinois Power Company
* Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corp.
* McDonnell-Douglas
* Mobil Corporation
* National Association of Manufacturers
* National Lime Association
* National Mining Association
* National Ocean Industries Association
* National Petrochemical and Refiners Association
* Natural Rural Electric Cooperative Association
* Norfolk Southern
* Northern Indiana Public Serv. Co.
* Ohio Edison
* Parker Drilling Company
* Process Gas Consumers
* Shell
* Society of the Plastic Industry
* Southern Company
* Steel Manufacturers Association
* TECO Energy Inc.
* Texaco
* U.S. Chamber of Commerce
* USX Corporation
* Union Carbide
* Union Pacific
* Virginia Power
* Western Fuels Association

- from noimpactman. 29 Apr 2009

Boycott these companies.

Abandon village

The indigenous people of Alaska have stood firm against some of the most extreme weather conditions on Earth for thousands of years. But now, flooding blamed on climate change is forcing at least one Eskimo village to move to safer ground.

The community of the tiny coastal village of Newtok voted to relocate its 340 residents to new homes 9 miles away, up the Ninglick River. The village, home to indigenous Yup’ik Eskimos, is the first of possibly scores of threatened Alaskan communities that could be abandoned.

Warming temperatures are melting coastal ice shelves and frozen sub-soils, which act as natural barriers to protect the village against summer deluges from ocean storm surges.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that moving Newtok could cost $130 million. Twenty-six other Alaskan villages are in immediate danger, with an additional 60 considered under threat in the next decade, according to the corps.

The village crisis is taking place as more than 400 indigenous people from 80 nations gather 500 miles (800 kilometers) away in Anchorage, Alaska, at the first Indigenous Peoples’ Global Summit on Climate Change.

Climate change, conference delegates say, is threatening the traditional lifestyles of indigenous peoples around the world. Specific environmental threats include droughts, sea level rise, warmer temperatures; lack of rainfall, flooding and loss of biodiversity, climatologists say. The specific combination of threats varies by region.

For example, in the island nation of Papua New Guinea, an increase in population growth coupled with rising sea levels is decreasing the amount of crop land making farming very difficult for the indigenous people of the region, according to the U.N.

In the African nation of Kenya, the Samburu tribe is on the verge of a food and economic crisis, the U.N. said, as lengthy droughts kill livestock that provides income and sustenance for the community.

In Mexico, highland Mayan farmers are fighting to survive amid decreasing rainfall, unseasonal frost and unprecedented changes in daytime temperatures, the U.N. reported. These conditions are forcing the farmers to plant alternative crops and to search for other sources of irrigation.

“Climigration” refers to the forced and permanent migration of communities because of severe climate change effects on essential infrastructure. This differs from migration caused by catastrophic environmental events such as hurricanes and earthquakes. The concept of “climigration” implies that there is no possibility of these communities returning home, said Alaskan human rights lawyer Robin Bronen, who coined the term.

- from cnn. 28 Apr 2009

Science checklist

The term “science” applies to a remarkably broad set of human endeavors, from developing lasers, to analyzing the factors that affect human decision-making. To get a grasp on what science is, we’ll look at a checklist that summarizes key characteristics of science and compare it to a prototypical case of science in action. This checklist provides a guide for what sorts of activities are encompassed by science, but since the boundaries of science are not clearly defined, the list should not be interpreted as all-or-nothing.

1. Focus on natural world.
Science studies the natural world. This includes the components of the physical universe around us like atoms, plants, ecosystems, people, societies and galaxies, as well as the natural forces at work on those things.

In contrast, science cannot study supernatural forces and explanations.

A SCIENCE PROTOTYPE: RUTHERFORD AND THE ATOM
In the early 1900s, Ernest Rutherford studied (among other things) the organization of the atom — the fundamental particle of the natural world. Though atoms cannot be seen with the naked eye, they can be studied with the tools of science since they are part of the natural world.

- from berkeley

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What is science?

For a scientist, every day holds the possibility of discovery — of coming up with a brand new idea or of observing something that no one has ever seen before.Vast bodies of knowledge have yet to be built and many of the most basic questions about the universe have yet to be answered:

What causes gravity?
How do tectonic plates move around on Earth’s surface?
How do our brains store memories?
How do water molecules interact with each other?

We don’t know the complete answers to these and an overwhelming number of other
questions, but the prospect of answering them beckons science forward.

Scientific questions can seem complex (e.g., what chemical reactions allow cells to break the bonds in sugar molecules), but they don’t have to be. You’ve probably posed many perfectly valid scientific questions yourself: how can airplanes fly, why do cakes rise in the oven, why do apples turn brown once they’re cut? You can discover the answers to many of these “everyday” science questions in your local library, but for others, science may not have the answers yet, and answering such questions can lead to astonishing new discoveries. For example, we still don’t know much about how your brain remembers to buy milk at the grocery store. Just as we’re motivated to answer questions about our everyday experiences, scientists confront such questions at all scales, including questions about the very nature of the universe.

Discoveries, new questions, and new ideas are what keep scientists going and awake at night, but they are only one part of the picture; the rest involves a lot of hard (and sometimes tedious) work. In science, discoveries and ideas must be verified by multiple lines of evidence and then integrated into the rest of science, a process which can take many years. And often, discoveries are not bolts from the blue. A discovery may itself be the result of many years of work on a particular problem, as illustrated by Henrietta Leavitt’s stellar discovery.

STELLAR SURPRISES

Astronomers had long known about the existence of variable stars — stars whose brightness changes over time, slowly shifting between brilliant and dim — when, in 1912, Henrietta Leavitt announced a remarkable (and totally unanticipated) discovery about them. For these stars, the length of time between their brightest and dimmest points seemed to be related to their overall brightness: slower cycling stars are more luminous. At the time, no one knew why that was the case, but nevertheless, the discovery allowed astronomers to infer the distances to far-off stars, and hence, to figure out the size of our own galaxy. Leavitt’s observation was a true surprise — a discovery in the classic sense — but one that came only after she’d spent years carefully comparing thousands of photos of these specks of light, looking for patterns in the darkness.

The process of scientific discovery is not limited to professional scientists working in labs. The everyday experience of deducing that your car won’t start because of a bad fuel pump, or of figuring out that the centipedes in your backyard prefer shady rocks shares fundamental similarities with classically scientific discoveries like working out DNA’s double helix. These activities all involve making observations and analyzing evidence — and they all provide the satisfaction of finding an answer that makes sense of all the facts. In fact, some psychologists argue that the way individual humans learn (especially as children) bears a lot of similarity to the progress of science: both involve making observations, considering evidence, testing ideas, and holding on to those that work.

- from berkeley

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Wind Energizer

Leviathan Energy has completed initial testing on their Wind Energizer unit and is reporting gains in wind turbine output in the ballpark of 30% — and as much as 150% at lower wind speeds.

The principle theory at work is that by placing passive objects around a wind farm it will change the circulation around a large wind turbine. The advancement is not in the turbine itself, but rather in the area around it, as such, units can be adapted to any wind turbine from any manufacturer.

The Wind Energizer is a donut-shaped structure made from steel and plastic, but the exact dimensions of it depend on site-specific data, like the tower height, length of the blades, prevailing wind direction and intensity, etc. As determined in the customized modeling process, Farb said that the structure may not even make an entire circle (as is depicted in the images).

- from cleantechnica. 29 Apr 2009.

Air-cooled condenser

Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (“DLR”), a German government research agency, presented a study in 2007 comparing a particular dry cooling technology, the Heller system, with wet cooling for CSP plants in Spain and in the California desert. Water consumption was reduced by 97%, and the performance impact was quite minimal. Indeed the impact on performance in the higher desert temperatures of California was overwhelmed by the benefits of better annual insolation. They also noted that the potentially negative impact of high daytime temperatures is mitigated by the use of thermal storage, which uses energy collected during peak daytime insolation to produce electricity when temperatures are considerably lower. One interesting aspect of the DLR study was their focus on Heller systems over more familiar (at least in the US) direct dry cooling systems, and that is worth a closer examination.

Two basic types of dry cooling systems have long been employed where necessary -– “direct” air cooling (usually called an “air-cooled condenser” or “ACC”) and “indirect” air cooling (often referred to as the “Heller system”, after Laszlo Heller, the Hungarian thermodynamics professor who pioneered this approach in the 1950s). In ACC systems, the saturated steam from the steam turbine exhaust is carried directly to a very large array of A-framed fin-tube bundles, where large mechanical fans force air over the tubes, convectively condensing the steam.

ACC system

In Heller systems, the steam is condensed by spraying water directly into the exhaust flow in a ratio of about 50:1 (called “direct contact jet condensing”), creating a large volume of warm water, some of which is pumped back to the boiler as the working fluid and the rest of which is pumped to bundles of tubes arrayed at the base of a natural-draft hyperbolic cooling tower. The warm water circulating around the base of the tower and the cooler air at the top of the tower, combined with the tower’s hyperbolic shape, stimulate a powerful updraft that draws ambient air over the tube bundles, thereby convectively cooling the water before it is returned to the condenser. Both are closed systems.

Heller system

While the Heller system has been widely used elsewhere, there are none in the US. This is probably because the much lower auxiliary power requirements of Heller systems come with the visual impact of a large hyperbolic cooling tower (typically 150m high and 120m in base diameter), often a difficult sell given that most fossil power stations are located in the vicinity of the populated demand centers they’re intended to serve. The auxiliary power required to run an ACC system is roughly twice the power required run a Heller system, and the Heller system is considerably quieter, but these have apparently been considered prices worth paying for the lower profile (a typical ACC system can be 40m high), particularly when it was cheap coal-fired power. Simple lack of familiarity could be another factor in the hidebound world of US power utilities.

The Electric Power Research Institute has kicked off a comparative study of indirect dry cooling (due to be completed in mid 2010), on the theory that it is the most economic dry cooling solution for large-scale thermal applications. The prospect of large amounts of CSP being built in the world’s deserts calls for a reconsideration of the relative merits of these two approaches, since it would require dry cooling to be deployed in a different application and to a far larger extent than has ever been the case.

They also note that the footprint of an ACC system is larger than that required for a Heller system, though specific data is not offered. Overall system efficiency of a Heller system is in the range of 2% better than an ACC system. That performance improvement meant one thing in a fossil power plant in the bad old days of cheap dirty power, but when it means 2% less land area covered by solar collectors, and lower auxiliary consumption of much more costly power, it takes on a much greater significance. The same sources note that since the Heller systems are mechanically far simpler than ACC systems, maintenance is much less of an issue and system availability is significantly greater. In the remote areas where these plants will be located, and given the large land areas over which they will spread, these are far more significant considerations than they were for compact fossil power plants located close to the populations they served. Another factor noted in these sources is that an ACC must be located next to the steam turbine it serves, because of the cost of transporting saturated steam over any distance, whereas the Heller system has much more flexibility in where the cooling tower is located. This will be much more important to CSP, where one can envision clusters of power tower complexes in a given area each with its own steam turbine, than it was with fossil plants. And finally, the feature that most worked against Heller systems in US fossil plant applications – visual impact – should be far less of an issue in remote desert sites, especially with solar power tower complexes where the central towers will likely be of similar height.

- from climateprogress. 29 Apr 2009.

Global warming What you believe

This chart, adopted from a very interesting new survey (.pdf) of 2,164 American adults on climate policy, reveals part of the problem that advocates of more aggressive measures to curb climate change may be encountering as they seek to push forward initiatives like cap-and-trade.

The survey, conducted by George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, reveals that Americans are concerned about global warming in the abstract — but perhaps only in the abstract. Just 32 percent of Americans think global warming will harm them “a great deal” or a “a moderate amount” personally. The further we get out from the individual, however, the more impactful people think climate change will tend to be: more impactful on their families than themselves; more impactful on their communities than their families; more impactful on their country than their communities; more impactful than other counties than on the United States; more impactful on future generations than the present one, and finally, more impactful on plants and animals than on humans.

These beliefs are not necessarily irrational. Climate change probably will have more impact on the developing world than the developed one, and it almost certainly will have more impact on our children than it does on ourselves.

Nevertheless, the fact that fewer than a third of Americans are worried about the effects that climate change will have on them personally strikes me as significant. Although more aggressive policy responses on climate change generally poll fairly well, they are also often the first things to be sacrificed in Americans’ minds when something else intervenes, such as a recession or higher energy prices. Advocates of cap-and-trade may need to find ways to personalize the terms of the debate.

- from fivethirtyeight. 26 Apr 2009

First Superconductor Power Cable

American Superconductor Corporation, a leading energy technologies company, today announced at Hannover Fair 2009 that LS Cable Ltd. (LS Cable) has ordered approximately 80,000 meters (50 miles) of 344 superconductors, which is AMSC’s proprietary brand of second generation (2G) high temperature superconductor (HTS) wire. LS Cable will utilize the wire to manufacture a 22.9 kilovolt (kV) cable system that it will install in Korea Electric Power Corporation’s (KEPCO) commercial power delivery network near the city of Seoul in 2010. Founded in 1962 and based in Anyang, South Korea, LS Cable is Korea’s largest power cable manufacturer with nearly 8,200 employees worldwide and annual sales in excess of US$6 billion. This is the single largest commercial order for 2G HTS wire in the world.

This project builds on the success Korea’s Development of Advanced Power Systems by Applied Superconductivity technologies (DAPAS) program, which has provided more than $100 million in funding for the development and commercialization of superconductor systems. In 2006, LS Cable and the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) successfully tested a 30-meter, 22.9kV superconductor cable. In 2007, LS Cable and KERI completed testing of a 100-meter, 22.9 kV superconductor cable system. Both of these projects were powered by AMSC’s first generation HTS wire and funded by the DAPAS program.

- from phx.corporate-ir. 20 Apr 2009

Fishing ban

A third of the world’s oceans must be closed to fishing if depleted stocks are to recover, scientists and conservation groups have warned. Such a measure could “set the clock back 200 years” and reverse the decline in fish populations, after which responsible fisheries management could regenerate the industry.

Callum Roberts, Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of York, has reviewed 100 scientific papers identifying the scale of closure needed. “All are leaning in a similar direction,” he says, “which is that 20 to 40% of the sea should be protected.” Friends of the Earth, the Marine Conservation Society and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds all support the idea of a 30% closure. “What we would see is a flourishing of life,” Roberts says. “In 20 years, we could get to a point where a lot of species are in a far more productive state.”

The proposal comes in the wake of a green paper calling for radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, which EU ministers admit has failed. It reveals that 88% of EU stocks are overfished (against a global average of 25%) while 30% are “outside safe biological limits” – meaning they cannot reproduce as normal because the parenting population is too depleted. In the North Sea, 93% of cod are fished before they have had a chance to breed.

The European Commission suggests a reduction in fleet size and a dramatic cut in fishing effort among its raft of measures, but Roberts believes these will not work without the creation of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). “Just cutting fishing effort is not enough,” he says. “If we are ever going to have sustainable fisheries, MPA networks are an essential, indispensable part of any rational management package.”

In Iceland, Canada and the US, the creation of MPAs has “brought real increases in fish populations and real recovery of seabed habitats”, Roberts says. “Populations of exploited species have increased five-, 10- or even 20-fold within five, 10 or 20 years.”

The most convincing example is New England, where stocks of ground fish were “in a dreadful state” in the 1990s. Off Georges Bank, an area of nearly 20,000 square kilometres – a quarter of the fishing grounds – was closed to vessels, and fishing effort was reduced by “a draconian 50 per cent”. In the past 10 years, Roberts says, there has been “a spectacular recovery” of key economic species.

As stocks within MPAs recover, the eggs and larvae of fish are carried on ocean currents to fishing grounds, Roberts explains. This helps replenish commercial fisheries. Fish also leave the protected areas, emigrating to places where they can be harvested legally.

Off Lundy Island in Devon, one of only three No-Take Zones (similar to MPAs) in British waters, the lobster population is eight times higher within the reserve. “We have already seen benefits in the lobster fishery immediately outside it,” says Giles Bartlett, fisheries policy officer at the environmental charity WWF. In the Isle of Man, where a No-Take Zone for scallops has been created, “there have been significant increases in catches on the boundary of the reserve”, he adds. “There, a limited size of reserve is supporting the whole fishery. If you scale those reserves up, you are going to see similar results for demersal [bottom-dwelling] fish stocks. We feel European seas would benefit from this kind of management.”

The fishing industry is less convinced, saying pressure on stocks just outside a protected area can “mitigate against the impact” of the MPA. “It almost creates a bull’s-eye for fishermen, who know the area on the periphery isn’t protected,” says Tom Rossiter, research and development manager at Seafish, the UK seafood industry body. “If you shut off an MPA, it will move the fishing effort somewhere else.”

Phil MacMullen, head of environment at Seafish, says a distinction must be made between MPAs created to conserve habitats and biodiversity, and those created for fisheries management purposes. “If you are very lucky, you may find an area designated for conservation also gives you fisheries benefits,” he says, but the likelihood is low. Seasonal closures at spawning times, and around specific areas such as nursery grounds, are already used effectively by fishermen.

Currently, there are 4,000 MPAs covering just 0.8% of the world’s oceans. New Zealand has already closed 30 per cent of its Exclusive Economic Zone – offshore fishing grounds – to trawlers and Australia is considering a similar move. Under the Marine Bill, the UK Government has committed to designating a coherent network of new Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) by 2012, though there is no mention of a percentage target.

- from guardian. 26 Apr 2009

Hidden truth

For more than a decade the Global Climate Coalition, a group representing industries with profits tied to fossil fuels, led an aggressive lobbying and public relations campaign against the idea that emissions of heat-trapping gases could lead to global warming.

“The role of greenhouse gases in climate change is not well understood,” the coalition said in a scientific “backgrounder” provided to lawmakers and journalists through the early 1990s, adding that “scientists differ” on the issue.

But a document filed in a federal lawsuit demonstrates that even as the coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

“The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied,” the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the coalition in 1995.

The coalition was financed by fees from large corporations and trade groups representing the oil, coal and auto industries, among others. In 1997, the year an international climate agreement that came to be known as the Kyoto Protocol was negotiated, its budget totaled $1.68 million, according to tax records obtained by environmental groups.

Throughout the 1990s, when the coalition conducted a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign challenging the merits of an international agreement, policy makers and pundits were fiercely debating whether humans could dangerously warm the planet. Today, with general agreement on the basics of warming, the debate has largely moved on to the question of how extensively to respond to rising temperatures.

Some environmentalists have compared the tactic to that once used by tobacco companies, which for decades insisted that the science linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer was uncertain. By questioning the science on global warming, these environmentalists say, groups like the Global Climate Coalition were able to sow enough doubt to blunt public concern about a consequential issue and delay government action.

The coalition disbanded in 2002, but some members, including the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute, continue to lobby against any law or treaty that would sharply curb emissions. Others, like Exxon Mobil, now recognize a human contribution to global warming and have largely dropped financial support to groups challenging the science.

- from nytimes. 23 Apr 2009.

Right Livelihood Award

How did Right Livelihood Award begin?

It about breaking silences. I was always wondering, why do we live with problems we can solve? Why are there solutions, but they’re not taken seriously? I was always interested in the question of, solutions and how do you get taken seriously. Now, if you grow up in Sweden, you realize that, suddenly in October, when the Nobel Prizes are announced, then there are these people who get taken seriously, not just in their own areas. Suddenly, if you win a Nobel Prize, you can pronounce on anything, and you get taken seriously and you’re listened to.

And these awards were created in a very different age, when the belief in progress and technology were still sort of unlimited. There was no problem with a so-called third world. There was no ecological problem. And so, there was a gap. And strangely enough, only one gap was filled in these hundred years. The Nobel Committee created one new award not started by Alfred Nobel himself, namely the one for economics. And I said, well, that’s a bit strange. There are very important other gaps here.

So I proposed to the Nobel Foundation an award for environmental work and for human development, and I offered to provide some money to start this from the sale of my business. Obviously I’m not as wealthy as Alfred Nobel, so it wouldn’t have funded the award in the long term. But it was to try to get them to take this seriously. And I received a polite reply back saying that they had decided not to introduce any more Nobel awards. And so, I then felt, obliged to try it myself. So I went back to Sweden, where I hadn’t lived since I was a child, and I sent out an announcement. I found through my network two very good recipients.

The first year, I was told that it was debated in the Swedish media whether this was a KGB plot or a CIA plot to discredit the Nobel Prizes. This was still in the Cold War. But one member of the Swedish parliament believed so much in this that in five years of work, she managed to convince enough colleagues from all the political parties to invite us to present these awards in the Swedish parliament, which has now happened, happening for over twenty years. So that, in brief, is the story.

It’s grown, the award, into other areas, because it’s a very open and democratic award. Nobel Prizes, only a certain very small group of people can nominate for a Nobel Prize. And with our award, anybody can nominate anybody, except, of course, themselves or their own organization. So we get nominations from all over the world. We knew that the environment remains, a very important issue. But we also realize that even in the areas where there are Nobel Prizes, like economics even, like medicine, like physics, only a certain group of people get these. Nobody from another medical tradition but modern Western medicine would ever get a Nobel Prize for medicine. No physics prize, no Nobel physics prize has ever gone to a solar energy physicist.

So we honored the most successful photovoltaic—solar photovoltaics researcher in the world, an Australian, Martin Green, a few years ago. And we’ve honored economists like Professor Herman Daly, who is now at University of Maryland, the pioneer of ethical ecological steady-state economics, because although he would deserve it in any objective world, he is very unlikely ever to get a Nobel Prize in economics. We have had a few other pioneers: Manfred Max-Neef from Chile, Leopold Kohr from Austria, highly recognized economics, but they were teaching the wrong kind of economics.

We gave an award to Wangari Maathai, the initiator of the Green Belt reforestation movement in Kenya, twenty years before she won the Nobel. That was kind of interesting, that we gave the award to her in ’84, which was the first year we had an all-women panel of recipients, and then exactly twenty years later, she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

awarded Munir, the great Indonesian human rights activist, who later died. He was poisoned when he was taking a plane out of Indonesia.

That was one of these great tragedies, that we have had other cases where we have not been able to save people, but other cases where we have saved them. I mean, in Nigeria, Ken Saro-Wiwa was still executed, but his closest collaborator told us that he felt that if we hadn’t given the award to their organization, they would have killed him, too. In another case from Guatemala, a human rights activist whose sister had been murdered in a political assassination told us that the chief of police actually told her when she came back from the award presentation that “Now you’re untouchable,” as he put it. “Now you’re so well known internationally that they won’t dare to kill you.” And fortunately, she’s still in good health.

Helen Mack, her sister Myrna Mack, who died September 11, 1990 at the hands of Guatemalan security forces, an anthropologist.

How the title Right Livelihood Award came

I was looking around, and I felt that it should symbolize the whole life, in a way. it’s a Buddhist term. I’m not a Buddhist, but I liked this idea of saying that, it isn’t just what you do, it’s how you live your life. And interestingly enough, it also challenges people to think. The name is too judgmental: “You’re saying that there are wrong livelihoods.” And so, of course there are wrong livelihoods. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in the mess you’re in.

And another aspect, of course, is being that because it’s very difficult to translate “right livelihood” into many languages, the award has become known—in the German-speaking world, for example, it’s entirely known as the Alternative Nobel Prize. And I think that helps the recipients. It’s not an anti-Nobel Prize, you know, but it is certainly a prize which ties in with what Alfred Nobel wanted to do. His award was very progressive in those days, to have an international award in a very nationalistic age. And he said, “I wanted to honor those who have brought the greatest benefit upon humanity.” And in a very different world today, I think that’s what we are trying to do. And that’s why it’s sort of interesting that even the family of Alfred Nobel sympathized with us. A senior member of Alfred Nobel’s family in Sweden is actually on our advisory council, because they are so outraged about the Nobel Foundation introducing the economics prize. because they think it was totally inappropriate. If you have an economics prize, then why not have a prize for ecology, for architecture, etc.? And I think they’re also quite unhappy with the choices. But their main reason is, of course, that they object to this prize being presented as a Nobel Prize when it has nothing to do with Alfred Nobel. It was established by Swedish national banks. Probably the Nobel Foundation felt that they couldn’t refuse it. The official name is sort of slightly different, but if you then get the book, the publication every year called Nobel Lectures, there are the—the economics lecture is also in there, so they’re playing a sort of double game.

why not choose somebody like Herman Daly, whose name is now being voted again and again as the kind of economic order is sort of being seen as increasingly bankrupt? He told us many of these things ten, twenty years ago. He wrote a book with a theologian, James Cobb, called For the Common Good, but especially his book on steady-state economics is highly up-to-date.

A stamp collector since I was nine, but I was a stamp dealer. So it was actually my business, which—when I sold that, which enabled me then to provide the initial funding for the award for the first five years. I funded it from the sale of my stamp business.

My father was a pacifist. And so, when I was nine years old, one day he offered me to exchange all of my toy guns, my water pistols, for a stamp collection. And I decided to accept the offer.

Interview with Jakob von Uexkull, the founder of the Right Livelihood Award.

- from democracynow. 8 Dec 2008.

Solé Power Tile

SRS Energy, a developer of sustainable solar roofing systems, is launching Solé Power Tile this month, bringing the first building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) roofing product to curved roofing systems.

The Solé Power Tile can help to provide for some of the energy needs of a house without installing solar panels, which may detract from the visual appeal or not be allowed due to regulations in HOA covenants. The tiles integrate seamlessly with clay tile roofs, making it easy to upgrade a curved tile roof to a power-generating platform.

According to SRS, the thin film solar technology generates more energy than comparable products in the harsh roofing environment, and the Solé Tile is backed by a full product warranty to ensure reliability for both designers and their clients. The tiles can be installed just like traditional clay tiles, but need to be installed by an authorized Solé Tile contractor.

- cleantechnica. 20 Apr 2009.

Cost-effective tidal power

Researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory have developed a cost-effective way to harness ocean tides and convert them into useful electricity in a more efficient manner. While conventional tidal generators work by using tidal wave to power an underwater turbine, this new system uses tidal turbine to generate a high pressure fluid, which is then used to run an onshore turbine.

According to the researchers, the system is based on the use of a special substance known as a phase change material that changes from a solid to a liquid as the temperature changes from cold to warm. Since the temperature inside an ocean keeps on fluctuating, it changes the shape of the phase change material and expands it. When this material expands, it increases the pressure of the fluid inside the pipes, which is then used to generate electricity.

Currently the technology is in its infancy and the researchers need to answer a few issues before commercial variants can be brought to the market. Initially the researchers have to find a way electricity will be transported to the shore, which might be miles away from the generators. Moreover, the system will demand the use of special wires that can withstand the extreme conditions present underwater.

- from ecofriend

New solar power plant in Arizona

Albiasa Corporation, subsidiary of Spanish based Albiasa Solar, has chosen Arizona as the new location for the renewable energy firm’s development headquarters and has selected a site near Kingman as the future location of its 200 megawatt (MW) concentrating solar power (CSP) plant.

The Albiasa project uses parabolic CSP technology similar to that at the SEGS I-IV power plants in the California Mojave Desert. These plants have reliably operated since the 1980s using the sun to generate electricity via parabolic collectors.

Albiasa Solar has worked for years in Spain to improve the parabolic trough technology, making overall operation and cost of CSP more efficient. The Albiasa trough collector has been assessed as the most efficient parabolic trough system in the world.

“The Albiasa Kingman project involves over $1 billion capital investment and will generate annually, with molten salt thermal storage, more than 665,000 MWh of renewable solar energy when completed in 2013,” said Albert Fong, Albiasa Corporation’s Chief Project Engineer.

- from azcommerce.

China’s investment in green economy

China’s leaders are investing $12.6 million every hour to green their economy.

So writes Ben Furnas Research Associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund
Furnass notes that “China is a leading manufacturer of photovoltaic (solar) cells, second only to Japan, and is set to be the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines by the end of 2009″ — not exactly low-tech, low-cost production.

A February analysis by HSBC Global Research in Hong Kong projects that nearly 40 percent of China’s proposed $586 billion stimulus plan—$221 billion over two years—is going toward public investment in renewable energy, low-carbon vehicles, high-speed rail, an advanced electric grid, efficiency improvements, and other water-treatment and pollution controls.

This stimulus is on top of historic levels of government spending and private investment in renewable technology, energy efficiency, and low-carbon growth all across China.

This massive stimulus plan will spend over 3 percent of China’s 2008 gross domestic product annually in 2009 and 2010 on green investments—more than six times America’s green stimulus spending as a percentage of our respective economies. This is about $12.6 million every hour over the next two years. In the United States, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act invests $112 billion in comparable green priorities over the next two years, about half as much as China, according to HSBC. This represents less than half of one percent of our 2008 gross domestic product.

China’s renewable energy industries are already huge and expanding rapidly. China is a leading manufacturer of photovoltaic (solar) cells, second only to Japan, and is set to be the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines by the end of 2009.

Take the photovoltaic (solar power) industry. In the 1990s, the United States led the world in the development of solar energy technology. From 1994 to 1998, our burgeoning solar energy industry produced more photovoltaic cells than Japan, China, or all of Europe. But then, in the early 2000s, as the Bush administration stifled global warming data and blocked a renewable energy portfolio standard, America stumbled and fell staggeringly behind.

In a series of energy bills in 2001, 2003, and 2005, the Bush administration plowed billions of dollars into dirty energy—oil, coal, and nuclear—while neglecting clean renewable energy industries. The 2001 energy bill gave 80 percent of its value to tax breaks for oil, gas, nuclear, and coal companies. The 2003 energy bill, drafted in secret with Vice President Dick Cheney and members of the oil, gas, coal, and electric industries, gave $23.5 billion to dirty energy and loosened environmental regulations. Finally, while the 2005 bill contained a token level of investment in renewable energy, it also provided even more support for dirty energy, offering $27 billion in subsidies for coal, oil, and nuclear energy.

The European Union has committed to 20 percent of final energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. China is working to have 16 percent of its primary energy come from renewable sources by 2020. Sixty-six other countries worldwide have committed to nationwide standards. But in the United States, the federal government has set no national standards.

– Ben Furnas climateprogress. 21 Apr 2009

Oceanic dead zones

Concentrations of carbon dioxide are increasing rapidly in the Earth’s atmosphere, primarily because of human activities. About one third of the carbon dioxide that humans produce by burning fossil fuels is being absorbed by the world’s oceans, gradually causing seawater to become more acidic.

However, such “ocean acidification” is not the only way that carbon dioxide can harm marine animals. In a “Perspective” published in the journal Science, Peter Brewer and Edward Peltzer combine published data on rising levels of carbon dioxide and declining levels of oxygen in the ocean in a set of new and thermodynamically rigorous calculations. They show that increases in carbon dioxide can make marine animals more susceptible to low concentrations of oxygen, and thus exacerbate the effects of low-oxygen “dead zones” in the ocean.

Brewer and Peltzer’s calculations also show that the partial pressure of dissolved carbon dioxide gas (pCO2) in low-oxygen zones will rise much higher than previously thought. This could have significant consequences for marine life in these zones.

For over a decade, Brewer and Peltzer have been working with marine biologists to study the effects of carbon dioxide on marine organisms. High concentrations of carbon dioxide make it harder for marine animals to respire (to extract oxygen from seawater). This, in turn, makes it harder for these animals to find food, avoid predators, and reproduce. Low concentrations of oxygen can have similar effects.

Currently, deep-sea life is threatened by a combination of increasing carbon dioxide and decreasing oxygen concentrations. The amount of dissolved carbon dioxide is increasing because the oceans are taking up more and more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At the same time, ocean surface waters are warming and becoming more stable, which allows less oxygen to be carried from the surface down into the depths.

In trying to quantify the impacts of this “double whammy” on marine organisms, Brewer and Peltzer came up with the concept of a “respiration index.” This index is based on the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide gas in a given sample of seawater. The lower the respiration index, the harder it is for marine animals to respire.

Brewer provides the following analogy, “Animals facing declining oxygen levels and rising CO2 levels will suffer in much the same way that humans in a damaged submarine would suffer, once the concentrations of these gasses reach critical levels. Our work helps define those critical levels for marine animals, and will enable the emerging risk to be quantified and mapped.”

In the past, marine biologists have defined “dead zones” based solely on low concentrations of dissolved oxygen. Brewer and Peltzer hope that their respiration index will provide a more precise and quantitative way for oceanographers to identify such areas. Tracking changes in the respiration index could also help marine biologists understand and predict which ocean waters are at risk of becoming dead zones in the future.

To estimate such effects in the open ocean, the MBARI researchers calculated the respiration index at various ocean depths, for several different forecasted concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. They found that the most severe effects would take place in what are known as “oxygen minimum zones.” These are depths, typically 300 to 1,000 meters below the surface, where oxygen concentrations are already quite low in many parts of the world’s oceans.

Previously, marine biologists have assumed that the effects of increasing carbon dioxide in the oceans would be greatest at the sea surface, where most of the gas enters the ocean. Such studies have predicted a doubling of pCO2 (from about 280 to 560 micro-atmospheres) at the sea surface over the next 100 years. Brewer and Peltzer’s calculations suggest that the partial pressure of carbon dioxide will increase even faster in the deep oxygen minimum zones, with pCO2 increasing by 2.5 times, from 1,000 to about 2,500 micro-atmospheres.

Previous studies have indicated that such oxygen minimum zones may expand over the next century. Brewer and Peltzer’s research suggests that the effects of this expansion will be even more severe than previously forecast.

According to coauthor Peltzer, “The bottom line is that we think it’s important to look at both oxygen and carbon dioxide in the oceans, rather than just one or the other.” The impact of these chemical changes may be minimal in well-oxygenated ocean areas, but as the authors point out in their paper, “We may anticipate a very large expansion of the oceanic dead zones.”

- from sciencedaily. 18 Apr 2009

Permaculture

Permaculture is a essentially a set of principles for sustainable living, an approach to life based on observation and design. It was first developed in Australia in the 1970s, by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren, as a reaction to the industrialization of agriculture and forestry.

he way we farm in the developed world is hugely energy-intensive and ultimately unsustainable. In so-called primitive societies, farming takes place on a much smaller scale and causes no damage to ecosystems, while delivering higher yields. The ‘forest gardens’ that the indigenous peoples of Indonesia or the Philippines create can be farmed in perpetuity, for thousands of years – it is permanent agriculture.

Learning from this kind of gardening, Mollison and Holmgren drew out a number of over-arching principles for creating low-impact, productive ways of life. There are a number of different formulations of these principles.

Work with nature, rather than against it
By observing a piece of land, you can work out what it naturally wants to do. (Most of the UK defaults to woodland, if left along for long enough.) Work with the natural tendencies of the land, tweaking it to your needs, rather than imposing and then constantly enforcing a human vision for it.

Everything gardens
Every living thing intervenes in its environment in one way or another to benefit itself, or ‘gardens’ it’s immediate surroundings. It may be a big change like a beaver building a dam, or a tiny change, like a plant fixing nitrogen in the soil. By working out what each plant or animal does, beneficial relationships can be created. (See companion planting)

The problem is the solution
If something isn’t working, the clues to the solution will be inherent in the problem itself. A creative solution may make the ‘problem’ into a positive. If your garden has slugs, that’s bad news for your vegetables, but it would be good news for ducks.

Make the least change for the greatest possible effect
By getting elements of a system working together, work can be done without any further intervention. Permaculturists famously don’t dig their plots, but get worms to naturally turn and aerate the soil.

The yield of a system is only limited by the imagination of the designer
Elements of a natural system have multiple effects, and they can all be used. A chicken, for example, lays eggs. But it also produces manure, scratches the soil, eats bugs and pests, and generates body heat. How can you put all of those ‘yields’ to good use?

Permaculture works through close observation, seeing the way various things work together, and creating synergies. Although the examples above are agricultural, the principles can be applied to many areas of life, in town planning, architecture, design, or forestry. Because it deals with systems as a whole, and incorporates values such as energy conservation and zero-waste, it offers a useful set of tools for a society facing climate change and peak oil.

KPackageKit is clearing the cache

KPackageKit is the default package manager front end on Fedora 11. Its back end is Yum. After installation when I checked /var/cache/yum there was nothing saved.
There is one file /etc/yum.conf
In that file there a line keepcache=
It was initially 0, means do not keep the cache rpm files.
I set it 1. Now I got the rpm files after installation. This is required to install packages that don’t have internet connection. also avoid re-download in case of re installation. Save the cache is some other media.

The Carbon-Free Home

The Carbon-Free Home
36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit
by Rebekah Hren, Stephen Hren

Having weaned themselves completely from fossil fuels in their conventional 1930s urban house, Rebekah and Stephen Hren provide a map for others to do the same. Their book shows first how to reduce energy consumption, then to retrofit existing homes to obtain all heating, cooling, cooking, refrigeration, hot water, and electricity from renewable sources. The Hrens also provide advice on renewable methods of transportation and home gardening. These practical approaches fit anyone’s budget and can be implemented over time to progressively liberate a home from fossil-fuel dependency.

Stephen and Rebekah Hren live in Durham, North Carolina, where they are both actively involved with renewable energy, natural building, and edible urban gardening. Rebekah works with Honey Electric Solar, Inc., as a professional designer/installer of photovoltaic systems and domestic solar hot-water systems. Stephen is a professional restoration carpenter, focusing on antebellum houses. He teaches natural-building classes and workshops at the local community college, and in any spare time works with Bountiful Backyards, an edible-landscaping cooperative.

1970s lifestyle is safer

The rising numbers of people who are overweight and obese in the UK means the nation uses 19% more food than 40 years ago, a study suggests.

That could equate to an extra 60 mega-tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year, the team calculated.

Transport costs of a fatter population were also included in the International Journal of Epidemiology study.

Dr Phil Edwards, study leader and researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said they had set out to calculate what the UK energy consumption would be if the weight of the population was put back a few decades.

A “normal” adult population, where only 3.5% are classed as obese, was compared with a population where 40% are obese.

These populations reflect the proportions of overweight and obese people living in the UK in the 1970s – and what is predicted for the UK in 2010, the researchers said.

In addition to calculating the increased food costs of the heavier population, the team worked out how much additional fuel would be needed for transportation of modern-day UK compared with the 1970s version.

Greenhouse gas emissions from food production and car travel in the fatter population would be between 0.4 to 1 giga-tonnes higher per 1bn people, they estimated.

And people are generally bigger than they were three decades ago.

Between 1994 and 2004, the average male body mass index (BMI) in England increased from 26 to 27.3, with the average female BMI rising from 25.8 to 26.9 which equates to about 3 kg – or half a stone – heavier.

“This is not really just about obese people, the distribution of the whole population is what’s important,” said Dr Edwards.

“Everybody is getting a bit fatter.”

“Staying slim is good for health and for the environment.

“We need to be doing a lot more to reverse the global trend towards fatness, and recognise it as a key factor in the battle to reduce emissions and slow climate change.”

It is not just a UK issue – in nearly every country in the world, the average BMI is rising.

Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the Faculty of Public Health said shifting the population weight distribution back to that of the 1970s would do quite a lot to help the planet.

“In the 1970s we had bigger portions of vegetables and smaller portions of meat and there’s been a shift in the amount of exercise we do.

“All these things are combining to hurt the planet and this is a calculation that deserves a bit more attention,” he said.

- from bbc. 20 Apr 2009.

Foods From 5,000 Miles Away or More

Hawaiian Pineapple=5,000 Miles
Pineapple is native to southern Brazil and Paraguay and had spread to the Caribbean by the time Columbus arrived, who brought it back to Europe. By the beginning of the 19th century it was introduced into the Philippines, Hawaii, Zimbabwe and Guam. On Hawaii commercial cultivation began in the 1880s. Today Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire and the Philippines dominates world cultivation.

One of the common variety found in US grocery stores is Smooth Cayenne, which originated in Hawaii.

Chilean Wine=5,500 Miles
It may have come a long way to get to your NYC wine merchant, but wines from Chile sent by boat have far lower transportation emissions than sending them on a truck the 3,000 miles from Napa or Oregon.

Wine has been produced in Chile going back to the 16th century, when Spanish conquistadors brought grape vines with them to plant. By the mid 18th century, French varietals were introduced. But it wasn’t until the late years of the 20th century when the Chilean wine industry really began to expand—between 1995 and 2005, the number of wineries increased six-fold. Chile now is the fourth largest exporter of wines to the United States.

Ethiopian Coffee=7,000 Miles
Coffee was first discovered and in Ethiopia in the 9th century, from where it spread northwards to Egypt and Yemen, and on through the Muslim World to Europe, Indonesia and the Americas.

Today, Ethiopia is the fifth largest coffee exporter in the world, producing about 1.7 million tonnes of beans per year. That amount is dwarfed by the world’s largest producer, Brazil, which produces about 17 million tonnes per year. Globally, over one hundred million people in the developing world are dependent on coffee as their primary source of income.

Korean Ramen=7,000 Miles
I confess that I have a soft spot for instant ramen. Perhaps not the most nutritionally sound thing to eat with great frequency, but every once and a while it seems to be the perfect thing to eat. My personal favorite is Shin Ramyun, produced in South Korea. This spicy ramen has been produced in South Korea since 1986, is exported to 80 different countries and the highest selling brand of instant noodles in Korea.

Again, probably not the best thing for you in any great quantity, and there’s a lot of packaging containing those dried noodles, spice packet and dehydrated vegetables.

Indian Papadum=7,200 Miles
I have yet to meet a person that once they’ve been introduced to papadum. These thin lentil or chickpea flatbreads, crackers, wafers (call them what you will) are seriously tasty. Whether plain or dipped in chutney you really can’t go wrong.

In New York you can get ones imported from the UK and India and while both are good, somehow the ones I’ve had from India are just a little bit better.

Thai Jasmine Rice=8,500 Miles
There are plenty of rice varieties around the world that are plenty tasty in their own way, but one which really stands out for me is Thai Jasmine rice. Though you can probably find jasmine rice grown closer to New York City than 8,500 miles away in Thailand, the Thai rice just seems to cook up a better and have better flavor. Terroir influences wine taste and no doubt influences rice taste as well.

What you may not know is that Jasmine rice, officially known as the Kao Horm Mali 105 variety, wasn’t discovered (named is probably more accurate) until 1954.

Madagascar Vanilla=8,500 Miles
Vanilla is really a great example of how the world has had a globalized economy (albeit in a different and slower form) for quite a long time. Derived from orchids originating in Mexico, vanilla was introduced to Europe in the early 16th century by the Spanish. Due to the way that vanilla orchid is pollinated though (by a particular bee) attempts to grow it outside its native land proved futile until the 1840s. It was then that a French-owned slave on the island now known as Réunion in the Indian Ocean discovered how to hand-pollinate the plant.

Today to majority of the world’s vanilla is grown on Madagascar and Indonesia, with the former producing 6,200 tonnes per year (59% of world supply). Due to the labor intensive production of vanilla—the women in the photo are grading vanilla beans—it is the second most expensive flavoring in the world, after saffron.

Sri Lankan Tea=8,700 Miles
Like dog people and cat people, I’m pretty sure there are tea people and coffee people. Personally, while I do like coffee and drink it fairly often, if it came down to a desert island decision of one or the other, it’s tea all the way. (I’d also choose a cat, by the way…)

Ceylon tea (called such after the former name of Sri Lanka) is one of my favorite black teas—though I admit to having many favorites. The interesting historical thing about it is that it wasn’t until the 1850s, when a fungal outbreak ruined coffee production on the island and the British landlords thought it high time to diversify into tea. From 1880 to 1890 tea production on the island increased from 23 pounds to 22,900 tons.

Sri Lanka is currently the world’s third largest exporter of tea, with 19% of the global market.

New Zealand Lamb=9,000 Miles
From New York, New Zealand is just about as far away as you can get, right up there with western Australia and part of Indonesia for being on the backside of beyond. Though I don’t personally eat lamb, New Zealand does make a big deal of the quality of its lamb so here it is:

Sheep top all other livestock raised in New Zealand, with some 45 million being raised. Cattle come in a distant second at 9 million. The main thing that sets apart New Zealand lamb from other places is that all of the sheep raised there are grass fed, rather than being raised in concentrated animal feeding operations.

While this is undeniably a better use of resources than using massive fossil fuel inputs to raise corn and grain to feed to animals, then killed for their meat, I highly doubt it outweighs sending that grass-fed meat around the world on planes. Ship might be another story.

- from treehugger. 17 Apr 2009

If possible Buy local. Eat seasonal. Eat organic.

Clean Air Act

Background

On April 2, 2007, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The Court held that the Administrator must determine whether or not emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare, or whether the science is too uncertain to make a reasoned decision. In making these decisions, the Administrator is required to follow the language of section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act. The Supreme Court decision resulted from a petition for rulemaking under section 202(a) filed by more than a dozen environmental, renewable energy, and other organizations.

Action

The Administrator signed a proposal with two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act:

• The Administrator is proposing to find that the current and projected concentrations of the mix of six key greenhouse gases-carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)-in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations. This is referred to as the endangerment finding.
• The Administrator is further proposing to find that the combined emissions of CO2, CH4, N2O, and HFCs from new motor vehicles and motor vehicle engines contribute to the atmospheric concentrations of these key greenhouse gases and hence to the threat of climate change. This is referred to as the cause or contribute finding.

This proposed action, as well as any final action in the future, would not itself impose any requirements on industry or other entities. An endangerment finding under one provision of the Clean Air Act would not by itself automatically trigger regulation under the entire Act.

- from epa

India’s 9/11

Why the terrorist attack on Mumbai is called India’s 9/11

Right when this was occurring, the relationship between 9/11 and Mumbai began to be made by the media.
Its become something of a cliché now. Anytime there is any attack they start to say this is our 9/11. You know whether it is the attack in London or the attack and Indonesia, everybody claims a terrorist attack now as their 9/11. There is something ominous about this. It means the state has to then follow the playbook laid out by the Bush Administration right after it experienced of course its 9/11. Which is to say you then go and start a war against an adversary that you claim did the attack and simultaneously, you begin to create a security apparatus inside your state to restrict the civil liberties of all people who live within that country.

So 9/11 or branding something as 9/11 has come to have these two aspects. One, go to war against somebody without any kind of full police investigation that is decisively shown us who has done the act. So one, a foreign war, secondly, what you might even consider to be a war against your own population. Where you start to restrict civil liberties far in excess of anything necessary. And of course, always fighting the last terrorist attack. So you build up this enormous apparatus of restrictions which is dealing with the previous attack against population and not trying to forecast the safety of the population into the near future. That is why the media started to talk about Mumbai’s 9/11.
The third reason is, the media had not really called any of the other attacks in Mumbai, and there have been many since 1992, 9/11, precisely because most of those attacks the have taken place in areas which afflicted the working poor, working-class, and middle-class people. This attack, for the first time, targeted places of the top elite. Very expensive hotels, leading restaurants, and this therefore, brought this kind of assault into the bedrooms, into the restaurant of the elite. And they found then that this is their 9/11. The other attacks were not called 9/11. There were the kind normal conditions of suffering borne by ordinary people in places like Bombay. So for these reasons, the media ratcheted up the rhetoric about this being Mumbai’s 9/11.
- Vijay Prashad

Who Sonal Shah is

Sonal Shah is a second-generation, South Asian, Indian American, who has just been picked, as you said, by the Obama team, as part of the transition team. There has been a severe controversy in the United States around her choice of even being on the transition team, and the primary reason is because she has two different lives. One life is as a liberal part of the whole Podesta establishment, etc., of the Democratic Party, and the other, which is still now unknown in the broader American public sphere, is that she has significant connections to the Hindu right wing, which Teesta, for instance, has referred to, etc.

She, herself, there’s documentary evidence that she served on the governing council of an organization called the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, which is kind of a sister organization for the Hindu right-wing nationalists violent organization back in India, here in the United States, from the period 1998- 2001. She then went on to coordinate the national—became a national coordinator for the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America for the earthquake relief operations in 2001. And we know that the funds generated from there were used in an extremely discriminatory fashion back in India wherein villages being reconstructed after the earthquake were broken up into Hindu villages and Muslim villages, where earlier they were integrated villages. Lower-caste villages and upper-caste villages, where earlier there were integrated villages. So, she has a record for a certain period of time that’s very easily traced

She has issued a statement and said her quote, personal politics have nothing in common with the views espoused by VHPA or any other such organization, that she’s always condemned in the politics of division of ethnic or religious hatred or violence and intimidation as a political tool.

That may be true, but when she says something like—if that statement had been preceded by a line which said that I have participated in this organization, etc., etc., etc., then one would say, “ok, maybe there is a particular way in which we can read it, we can give this person a second chance, etc., etc.” But to obfuscate the fact that she’s had significant involvement with this group in the past, immediately puts the needle of doubt back on again. Especially because the first statement wasn’t issued by her, the first statement was issued by her family, which came out and said that the family as a whole didn’t ever have anything to do with this politics. In other words the family—and she herself defended her family saying that her family, again, has nothing to do with these politics, that they’re only involved with religious and cultural organizations, whereas her father has been out on election campaigns for the Hindu right-wing party. I mean, when Modi, “the butcher of Gujarat,” came to the United States the last time, the time before he was denied a visa, he stayed with them. The point is very simply that her statement is a good statement, but I think it is important to note that even within that good statement there’s a fair amount of obfuscation.
- Biju Mathew

Vijay Prashad, Chair of South Asian History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut and a regular contributor to Counterpunch and Frontline India. His latest book is “The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World.” His article on the Mumbai attacks comes out in Counterpunch today.

Biju Mathew, New York City based activist with the Campaign to Stop Funding Hate and the Coalition Against Genocide. He is a co-founder of the New York Taxi Worker Alliance and is the author of “Taxi! Cabs and Capitalism in New York City.” His latest article is published in Samar magazine dot org. its called “As the Fires Die: The Terror of the Aftermath.”

- from democracynow. 1 Dec 2008.

Mandela and Obama

These two people first of all in their personal histories who obviously had to work very deeply upon themselves. Mandela said his major political work was done upon himself when he was in prison all those years. How to move from, say a nationalist leader to a national leader, how to move from historical revenge to reconciliation, to nation building- this is one of the easy things. I think in some ways it has to do with constructing one’s own identity, it has to do with constructing one’s own ethical guidelines. I think that’s what Mandela did and what Obama done also. But they come to power carried on a huge wave of popular expectation. You know, what I find painful at the moment it seems to me of course one doesn’t know because it’s at a very early stage – its that it seems to be kind of a discarding of what this national mandate actually means that brought Obama to power.

When, one to see the way the new administration is being constructed, it seems like Washington is continuing the way it always has. And that he would be locked in or be spun in a particular web of people who probably may even been very, very concerned, may even be very honest and serious, but do have vastly different interests from the people who put him in power, who voted for him. And I think this happened to some extent to Mandela as well. It’s nearly as if having achieved that kind of historical emblematic capacity of being able to bring such vastly different components of society together then somehow seems to incapacitate you, to be able to carry further that which historically really needs to be done.

- Breyten Breytenbach

Breyten Breytenbach is the exiled South African poet, writer, painter, outspoken activist for justice. Born to an Africaaner or white South African family in 1939, he moved to Paris in the early 1960’s, became deeply involved with the anti-apartheid movement. He married a French woman of Vietnamese descent and faced the prospect of being arrested if he returned to South Africa because of laws banning interracial marriage. After a brief visit in 1973, Breyten Breytenbach founded an anti-apartheid group with other exiled white South Africans. In 1975 he returned secretly to South Africa under a false passport. He was arreted, charged with terrorism and imprisoned for more than seven years. One of his most famous books was based on his experience in prison, called The True Confessions Of An Albino Terrorist. Today, Breyten Breytenbach divides his time between the Goree Institute in Senegal and New York University, where he teaches creative writing. He’s the author of dozens of books of poetry, essays and has won numerous prizes and worldwide recognition for his writing and painting. His latest book is called All One Horse, and his most recent essay is published in the December issue of Harpers Magazine. It’s an open letter to Nelson Mandela called “Mandela’s Smile.”

- more at democracynow. 26 Nov 2008.

Solana: The world’s largest solar plant

Location: Gila Bend, near Phoenix, Arizona.

Type of proyect : 280 MW, CSP trough plant with storage.

At Abengoa Solar, we have signed an agreement with Arizona Public Service (APS), the largest electric company in Arizona, to build and operate what will be the largest solar power plant in the world.

For us, this contract will represent the construction of the first concentrating solar power plant for producing electric power in the United States.

The plant will be installed approximately 100 kms southeast of Phoenix, near Gila Bend. Solana features thermal storage-equipped parabolic trough technology with 280 MW of power output capacity. Once operational, it will have the capability of supplying 70,000 homes and will prevent the emission of 400,000 t of CO2.

Solana will operate like Solnova, with the addition of storage capacity as shown in the diagram below.

This thermal storage allows the system to send power to the grid even when the sky is overcast and allows Solana to generate electricity even after the sun goes down.

The plant will have an area of 1,900 acres and will create 1,500 new jobs during its construction. Once completed, there will be around 100 positions for qualified personnel over the course of its life.

- from abengoasolar.

So low carbon make you happy

This chart, focusing on 10 countries, was created by taking data from the World Values Survey (the orange lines) and comparing it against per capita carbon emissions (the green lines). It's worth noting that all of these places perceive themselves as happy--and with the exception of El Salvador and Colombia have equal or better living standards--with a much lower carbon footprint.

Although it may come as a surprise, research shows a larger carbon footprint doesn’t lead to happiness. While the United States ranks near the top of both per capita and aggregate carbon emissions, it’s not in the top 10 when it comes to happiness. In fact, many nations ranked happier than the U.S. also tread much more lightly on the planet. Read on to find out where the U.S.’s carbon emissions come from and which countries are doing it right.

Though the U.S. doesn’t have the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world, it’s pretty close to the top at roughly 20.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide on average per person. It should be noted that the recession is currently reducing this figure, and that it is the national average, meaning some states have much lower emissions: New York and California for example. Others, such as Wyoming and Louisiana (due to the types of industry there more than anything else) have much higher emissions.

In terms of the Human Development Index, the U.S. does pretty well (15th in the world). Life expectancy is a healthy 78 years and 99% of people are literate.

The U.S. not only uses a lot of energy–2.3 million thousand tonnes of oil equivalent, a weird term, but that’s what the IEA uses–but also generates most of its electricity from coal (48%=bad) and natural gas (20%=less bad but not good); and uses a disproportionate amount of energy in the transport sector when compared to other nations.

Breaking down U.S. energy use by sector, the U.S. uses 41% of all its energy for transportation (nearly all oil), 18% by industry (mostly natural gas), 16% in residential used (mostly electricity and slightly less natural gas). The rest goes to commercial and public service use, a whole array of unspecified use, and a mere 1% in agriculture, fishing and forestry.

Compare that to Denmark and at least part of the reason why U.S. per capita emissions are so high becomes clear. The way the nation’s civic infrastructure has been constructed (large spaces, low density development and next to no public transportation) directly leads to a higher percentage of energy needed for transport.

1. Denmark: Lower Emissions, Higher Happiness
Denmark is widely hailed as an increasingly green place. It certainly generates a lot of electricity from wind power, has great public transit, and, apart from the weather, is a great place to bike or walk around. It has identical life expectancy and literacy figures to the U.S. and ranks higher than the U.S. in terms of human development. So how are the carbon emissions of the average Dane less half those of the average American at 9.8 tonnes of CO2 per person?

Transport still is the number one consumer of energy in Denmark, and like the U.S., most of it comes from oil. Yet the Danes use only 34% of their total energy on transport–statistically more in line with the rest of the world, by the way. Following that is residential usage at 28% (with heat coming from biomass and natural gas being most of that); industry is the third place sector at 18%. Commercial usage is identical and agricultural usage more than the United States.

In terms of electricity usage, more coal is used in Denmark than the U.S. (54%), but 22% comes from wind power and biomass. Combined with the fact that Denmark uses energy much more efficiently per capita, you can start to see how Danes can have higher human development, standards of living and, well, happiness.

2. Switzerland: Low Carbon Electricity is the Key
Up in the mountains of Switzerland, they really know how to keep the per capita emissions down–5.5 tonnes per person, lower than even the best states and cities in the U.S.–while still having an amazingly high standard of living. In this case, it all comes down to generating energy from mostly low or no-carbon sources.

Transport in Switzerland still makes up the largest single part of overall energy usage at 34%. Most of that still comes from oil, but 4% does come from electricity so that’s a start in the right direction. Residential comes after that at 29% (with oil as half of that usage and a quarter electricity); industrial use is 19% (but nearly half of that is electricity).

3. New Zealand: Low Carbon Electricity Makes Up For Transport Emissions
New Zealand is an interesting case. Like the U.S., transportation energy usage comprises a disproportionate amount of overall demand (44%) and virtually all of that is from oil. But per capita carbon emissions are relatively low, at 7.8 tonnes per person. In terms of human development, New Zealand is a highly developed country (20th in the world), with higher life expectancy than most nations (80 years). So what’s their secret?

It’s all in the electricity: 65% of it comes from low carbon sources (mostly hydro, but not insignificant amounts of geothermal, plus some wind and biomass). And then consider that electricity makes up four-tenths of industrial usage and three-quarters of residential usage, and the bigger picture starts taking shape.

Greening transportation would really take a bite out of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. Switching a significant amount of transportation to low carbon fuel sources could make a huge difference, considering so much energy goes into that sector.

4. Colombia: Green Electricity, Warmer Climate Help Out
Colombia is the oddball in this group, in that its per capita carbon emissions are seriously low: 1.2 tonnes of CO2 per person. Columbia is considered to have a medium level of human development: Life expectancy is still over 72 years and there is 92% literacy. It also happens to be, at least as surveyed, a very happy nation. A small increase in energy usage could probably help increase the human development stat, while still keeping per capita emissions down.

A couple of energy factors contribute to this low number: Very little heating is recorded for Colombia, so the warmer climate comes into play. It also happens to have very green energy, with about 80% coming from hydropower.

Other than that, it uses energy slightly less efficiently than Denmark or Switzerland, but much better than the U.S. The way overall energy usage is divided between end-use sectors is much in line with Europe: 32% for transport (mostly oil, but 7% natural gas and biofuels); 29% goes to industry (mostly combustible renewables, natural gas and electricity); 20% residential (other than about 20% natural gas, coming from green-ish sources).

The per capita Gross Domestic Product of Colombia may be low per person, but it’s still doing something right: Literacy, life expectancy and happiness are high; per capita emissions are ecologically sustainable. In terms of human development, there are more “developed” places, but there are plenty of places that are worse off, at least statistically.

- from treehugger. 15 Apr 2009.

First biomass plant in China

China’s Baotou Kaidi Sunshine Energy Investment announced plans for the country’s first biomass plant to be powered by the native shrubs of hippophae rhamnoides and caragana.

Baotou Kaidi is expected to spend RMB 1 billion ($147 million) to build the plant in Damao Banner, a section of Baotou, which is the largest city in Inner Mongolia.

The plant is expected to generate 150 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per year by consuming 130,000 tons of hippophae rhamnoides and caragana. The plants are expected to replace 80,000 tons of coal annually.

Hippophae rhamnoides, more commonly known as sea buckthorn, is a rugged plant that reaches maturity in about four to five years. It has thorny branches and edible berries, which can be used to make medical oils. The mature plant can be cold-, wind-, salt-, and drought-tolerant.

Caragana, also called the Siberian peashrub, is also a fast-growing shrub tolerant of cold temperatures and drought.

- from cleantech. 15 Apr 2009

Increasing CO2

Emissions in the US keep on risin’, according to the EPA’s new Greenhouse Gas Inventory Report. Greenhouse gas emissions totaled 7,150,000,000 tons in 2007, showing a 1.4% increase from 2006—bringing the overall rise from 1990 levels up to 17.2%. If that rise keeps constant, we’re likely to see a 20% increase by 2010—not exactly good news for many who’d hoped we’d be on a path to emissions reduction by now.

The spike in emissions came mostly from fuel and coal-produced electricity consumption, so it may be the case that we see emissions level off in 2008 because of the high gas prices that year. Then again, perhaps not—more than fossil fuels burned from driving in 2007, the biggest factors were increased heating and cooling demands. According to the report, the three biggest changes from 2006 to 2007 were:

(1)increased demand for heating fuels and electricity due to cooler winter and warmer summer conditions in 2007 than in 2006; (2) increased consumption of fossil fuels to generate electricity; and (3) a significant decrease (14.2 percent) in hydropower generation used to meet this demand.

So American energy consumption habits aren’t changing, and CO2 levels are still on the rise—no big surprise there. But still, it’s disheartening. Which is why we need climate legislation, and to start cracking down on coal now more than ever.

- from treehugger. 15 Apr 2009.

Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn

The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting gentically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany.

Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed “a danger to the environment,” a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND) both welcomed the ban. Greenpeace’s genetic engineering expert, Stephanie Töwe, said the decision was long overdue, explaining that numerous scientific studies demonstrated that GM corn was a danger to the environment.

However the ban could prove costly for the German government. Experts in Aigner’s ministry recently told SPIEGEL that it will be hard to prove conclusively that MON 810 damages the environment, which could enable Monsanto to win a court case opposing the ban and potentially expose the government to €6-7 million ($7.9-9.2 million) in damages.

Monsanto said Tuesday that it would look into the question of whether it would take legal proceedings as quickly as possible. Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman for Monsanto Germany, said the matter was very urgent as the planting season was just about to start.

Aigner has recently come under pressure from Bavaria to ban GM corn. Bavaria’s Environment Minister Markus Söder wants to turn Germany into a “GM food-free zone.” Environmental groups have long called for a ban on GM crops in Germany, arguing that they pose a danger to plants and animals.

However, supporters of genetic engineering argue that a ban could prompt research companies and institutes to pull up stakes and leave Germany. Wolfgang Herrmann, president of Munich’s Technical University, has said that a prohibition risks precipitating “an exodus of researchers.”

MON 810 was approved for cultivation in Europe by the European Union in 1998 and is currently the only GM crop which can be grown in Germany. The plant produces a toxin to fight off a certain pest, the voracious larvae of the corn borer moth. The crop was due to be planted this year on a total area of around 3,600 hectares (8,896 acres) in Germany. The cultivation of MON 810 is already banned in five other EU member states, namely Austria, Hungary, Greece, France and Luxembourg.

- from spiegel. 14 Apr 2009

Wiping out Atlantic blue fin tuna

Overfishing will wipe out the breeding population of Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the ocean’s largest and fastest predators, in three years unless catches are dramatically reduced, conservation group WWF said on Tuesday.

As European fishing fleets prepare to begin the two-month Mediterranean fishing season on Wednesday, WWF said its analysis showed the bluefin tuna that spawn — those aged four years and older — will have disappeared by 2012 at current rates.

The fish, which can weigh over half a ton and accelerate faster than a sports car, are a favorite of sushi lovers. Demand from Japan has triggered an explosion in the size of the Mediterranean fleet over the past decade and many of those boats use illegal spotter planes to track the warm-blooded tuna.

Illegal fishing is also rife for the bluefin, the dried, dark red meat of which once fed Roman armies on the march.

Growing numbers of restaurants and retailers including Carrefour’s Italian supermarkets are boycotting it.

WWF said that analysis of official data showed the average size of mature tunas had more than halved since the 1990s and that this has had a disproportionately high impact since bigger fish produced many more offspring.

The bluefin can only be saved by a complete halt to fishing in May and June as the fish rush through the Straits of Gibraltar to spawn in the Mediterranean, WWF and other campaign groups say.

- from reuters. 14 Apr 2009.

Thank you for not/reduced eating of fish.

Interview with Muhammad Yunus

The financial crisis not happened till now in Bangladesh. We are waiting for the sunami to hit us. Migrant worker are coming back. But in small numbers compared to the total number of the workers. Some day it will be a large problem. Recesion is still rising. Its not declined yet. Export orders are declining. Exports are not declined yet. But we have some advantage. Bangladesh have the cheapest wage in the world. So works are shifting from china and vietnam to Bangladesh. We dont know when will the sunami hit us hard.

Financial crisis and climate change
We all talk about financial crisis. Front pages, editorial coverage are all on financial crisis. Its not the one crisis going on. There is food crisis going on which is pushed away from the front page. There is environmental crisis. There is evergy crisis where price went to the roof and it is not disappeared. All these are combined that is happening right now. These are not seperate pieces. These are the fundamental problem in the system.

Capitalism is based on market and self correcting mechanism of market is not working.
Is this a defining moment in the history of human kind. We saw great depression of 1930, and a generation later another great depression. We dont want 3rd world war to solve this issue. How will be the future of capitalism?

The current crisis is much worse than Great Depression. Because Great Depression had only financial part. This is a combination of many may issues. It is a big crisis and at the same time it is an opertunity for the human beings. To address in a different way to the design of the system. If things are moving well you dont need to fix it, you dont need to touch the system at all. Now the engine collapsed. It is a good time to open it up, fix it and redesign the system so that we can go back without these problems that we created by ourselves. Thats why we need to fix the problem of the capitalistic system that we are all belong to.

Capitalistic system is basically faulty. It is based on only one element of the human being. Maximization of the profit.

Shrinking of govt.

The whole system that have is a half way done system. Here human beings are presented as one dimensional thing. All they do is maximizing the profit. But real human being are not one dimensional. human being are selfish. But theoritision took selfishness and build whole theory out of that and called it capitalistic system. Adom Smith wrote two books. One is the Wealth of Nation and other is “Theory of Moral Sentiments”. That second book nobody paid any attension. There he talking about other dimansions of human beings. Human beings are also have selflessness. What about having bussiness out of that? Why dont we create a world with two businesses. One is selfish business which is about making money, which is good and other one social businesses.

Muhammad Yunus, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta
- from Loksabha TV.

It is more than sympathy. Its the only way we can provide sustainability. Gnu and Free Software is one example of such system.

Shipping pollution

Britain and other European governments have been accused of underestimating the health risks from shipping pollution following research which shows that one giant container ship can emit almost the same amount of cancer and asthma-causing chemicals as 50m cars.

Confidential data from maritime industry insiders based on engine size and the quality of fuel typically used by ships and cars shows that just 15 of the world’s biggest ships may now emit as much pollution as all the world’s 760m cars. Low-grade ship bunker fuel (or fuel oil) has up to 2,000 times the sulphur content of diesel fuel used in US and European automobiles.

Pressure is mounting on the UN’s International Maritime Organisation and the EU to tighten laws governing ship emissions following the decision by the US government last week to impose a strict 230-mile buffer zone along the entire US coast, a move that is expected to be followed by Canada.

The setting up of a low emission shipping zone follows US academic research which showed that pollution from the world’s 90,000 cargo ships leads to 60,000 deaths a year in the US alone and costs up to $330bn per year in health costs from lung and heart diseases. The US Environmental Protection Agency estimates the buffer zone, which could be in place by next year, will save more than 8,000 lives a year with new air quality standards cutting sulphur in fuel by 98%, particulate matter by 85% and nitrogen oxide emissions by 80%.

The new study by the Danish government’s environmental agency adds to this picture. It suggests that shipping emissions cost the Danish health service almost £5bn a year, mainly treating cancers and heart problems. A previous study estimated that 1,000 Danish people die prematurely each year because of shipping pollution. No comprehensive research has been carried out on the effects on UK coastal communities, but the number of deaths is expected to be much higher.

Cars driving 15,000km a year emit approximately 101 grammes of sulphur oxide gases (or SOx) in that time. The world’s largest ships’ diesel engines which typically operate for about 280 days a year generate roughly 5,200 tonnes of SOx.

Shipping emissions have escalated in the past 15 years as China has emerged as the world’s manufacturing capital. A new breed of intercontinental container ship has been developed which is extremely cost-efficient. However, it uses diesel engines as powerful as land-based power stations but with the lowest quality fuel.

The calculations of ship and car pollution are based on the world’s largest 85,790KW ships’ diesel engines which operate about 280 days a year generating roughly 5,200 tonnes of SOx a year, compared with diesel and petrol cars which drive 15,000km a year and emit approximately 101gm of SO2/SoX a year.

Shipping by numbers

The world’s biggest container ships have 109,000 horsepower engines which weigh 2,300 tons.
Each ship expects to operate 24hrs a day for about 280 days a year
There are 90,000 ocean-going cargo ships
Shipping is responsible for 18-30% of all the world’s nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution and 9% of the global sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution.
One large ship can generate about 5,000 tonnes of sulphur oxide (SOx) pollution in a year
70% of all ship emissions are within 400km of land.
85% of all ship pollution is in the northern hemisphere.
Shipping is responsible for 3.5% to 4% of all climate change emissions

- from guardian. 9 Apr 2009.

Please dont buy imported products.

Aerosols warming the Arctic

Though greenhouse gases are invariably at the center of discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.

Emitted by natural and human sources, aerosols can directly influence climate by reflecting or absorbing the sun’s radiation. The small particles also affect climate indirectly by seeding clouds and changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity.

A new study, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, used a coupled ocean-atmosphere model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.

The researchers found that the mid and high latitudes are especially responsive to changes in the level of aerosols. Indeed, the model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 percent or more of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last three decades. The results were published in the April issue of Nature Geoscience.

Though there are several varieties of aerosols, previous research has shown that two types — sulfates and black carbon — play an especially critical role in regulating climate change. Both are products of human activity.

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.

At the same time, black carbon emissions have steadily risen, largely because of increasing emissions from Asia. Black carbon — small, soot-like particles produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels — absorb incoming solar radiation and have a strong warming influence on the atmosphere.

In the modeling experiment, Shindell and colleagues compiled detailed, quantitative information about the relative roles of various components of the climate system, such as solar variations, volcanic events, and changes in greenhouse gas levels. They then ran through various scenarios of how temperatures would change as the levels of ozone and aerosols — including sulfates and black carbon — varied in different regions of the world. Finally, they teased out the amount of warming that could be attributed to different climate variables. Aerosols loomed large.

The regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature increases since 1976. The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, where aerosols play less of a role, the surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 C (0.6 F).

That makes sense, Shindell explained, because of the Arctic’s proximity to North America and Europe. The two highly industrialized regions have produced most of the world’s aerosol emissions over the last century, and some of those aerosols drift northward and collect in the Arctic. Precipitation, which normally flushes aerosols out of the atmosphere, is minimal there, so the particles remain in the air longer and have a stronger impact than in other parts of the world.

In the Antarctic, in contrast, the impact of sulfates and black carbon is minimized because of the continent’s isolation from major population centers and the emissions they produce.

Aerosols tend to be quite-short lived, residing in the atmosphere for just a few days or weeks. Greenhouses gases, by contrast, can persist for hundreds of years. Atmospheric chemists theorize that the climate system may be more responsive to changes in aerosol levels over the next few decades than to changes in greenhouse gas levels, which will have the more powerful effect in coming centuries.

NASA’s upcoming Glory satellite is designed to enhance our current aerosol measurement capabilities to help scientists reduce uncertainties about aerosols by measuring the distribution and microphysical properties of the particles.

- from sciencecodex. 8 Apr 2009.

Japanese killer

Japan’s whaling catch in its latest Antarctic hunt fell far short of its target after disruptions by anti-whaling activists, the Fisheries Agency said. Japan, which considers whaling to be a cherished cultural tradition, killed 679 minke whales despite plans to catch around 850. It caught just one fin whale compared with a target of 50 in the hunt that began in November.

Some ships in its six-ship fleet have returned home after clashes with the hardline group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, including a collision that crushed a railing on one of the Japanese ships.

A Fisheries Agency official said ships could not carry out whaling for a total of 16 days because of bad weather and skirmishes with the activists.

Japan officially stopped commercial whaling after agreeing to a global moratorium in 1986, but began what it calls a scientific research whaling program the following year. Whale meat can be found in some supermarkets and restaurants.

The agency has declined to comment on a recent report that Japan is considering reducing the number of whales it catches each year.

Japan has a moratorium on catching humpback whales, a favorite with whale watchers, after international criticism.

- from reuters. 13 Apr 2009

Dear Japanese people dont eat whale. Also wild animal products such as ivory etc.

Oil Spill Surface Cleanup

Birds are the most high-profile victims of oceanic oil spills, but fish suffer from these messy accidents, too. Even worse, a new study suggests, the chemicals commonly used to clean up oil spills make oil far more toxic to fish, particularly for eggs and young fish.

Oil and water don’t normally mix. So, when a truck, train, or ship accidentally dumps its cargo into a lake, stream or sea, the oil sits on top of the water and spreads across its surface. The slick substance then flows with the currents and tides, poisoning the animals it encounters along its way.

Another way to get oil off the surface is to use a chemical dispersing agent. These detergent-based substances cause oil to bead up into tiny droplets that can mix into the water and disperse into deeper layers. Underwater currents can then theoretically dilute the oil and its risk to the environment.

Dispersion spares surface-dwelling animals, such as birds and otters. But as oil drifts downward, it falls on fish and on the eggs that are stuck to surfaces or buried in the sediment.

To find out just how dangerous dispersed oil might be to fish, Peter Hodson, a fish toxicologist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and colleagues performed a series of laboratory experiments with beakers that were meant to simulate contaminated lakes. In all of the beakers, the scientists mixed water with diesel oil, then added newly hatched trout embryos. In some beakers, the scientists added a dispersing agent.

Their analyses, published in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, showed that dispersants greatly increased the amount of hydrocarbons that could affect fish. In turn, that extra dose of exposure made the oil 100 times more toxic to the animals. Toxicity was measured as an elevated enzyme response in the livers of the fish.

Exposure to dispersed oil doesn’t kill a lot of fish, Hodson added. Instead, it either kills eggs before they hatch or leads to damage or deformities in juvenile fish. Compared to the horrifying appearance of oil-drenched birds on beaches, it can be hard to catch the attention of the public — or even of cleanup managers — with such subtle and hidden health effects.

- from discovery. 10 Apr 2009

Future light

the European Commission formally adopted new regulations that will phase such bulbs out in Europe by 2012. America will do so by 2014. Some countries, such as Australia, Brazil and Switzerland, have got rid of them already. When a voluntary agreement came into force in Britain, at the start of the year, people rushed out to buy the last 100-watt light bulbs. Next to go are lower-wattage bulbs.

But what will replace the light bulb? Although obtaining illumination by incandescence (ie, heating something up) goes back to prehistory, it was not until 1879 that Thomas Edison demonstrated a practical example that used a wire filament encased in glass. Modern bulbs, the descendants of that demonstration, are cheap (around 50 cents) but inefficient, because only about 5% of the energy they use is turned into light and the rest is wasted as heat. A typical bulb also has to be replaced every 1,000 hours or so.

Without changing light fittings, the cheapest direct replacement for an incandescent bulb at the moment is a compact fluorescent light (CFL). These use up to 75% less power and last ten times longer, but they cost around $3 each. That price puts some people off, which explains part of the hoarding of incandescent bulbs. But others object not to the price but to the quality of the light, which has a different spectrum from the one they are used to. CFL bulbs can also be slow to reach maximum illumination. And some people worry that they may be bad for the health. Fluorescent lights use electricity to excite mercury vapour. This produces ultraviolet light that causes a phosphor coating inside the bulb to glow. The lights can flicker, which could set off epileptic fits, and badly made ones might leak ultraviolet radiation, and may thus pose a cancer risk. There are also concerns about the disposal of the toxic mercury.

The most promising alternatives are light-emitting diodes (LEDs). An LED is made from two layers of semiconductor, an “n-type” with an excess of negatively charged electrons, and a positive “p-type” which has an abundance of “holes” where electrons should be but aren’t. When a current is applied across the sandwich, the electrons and holes team up at the junction of the two materials and release energy in the form of light. The colour depends on the properties of the semiconductor, and these can be tuned to produce light that is similar to natural daylight but with virtually no ultraviolet or heat.

Light-emitting diodes have progressed from simple red indicators on electronic products to become torches, streetlights and car headlights. Now the first mains-voltage LEDs designed as direct replacements for incandescent bulbs are arriving on the market. Some, such as the Philips Master LED range, promise energy savings of up to 80% and a working life of 45,000 hours. But they are not cheap: around £40 ($56) in Britain.

Even so, LEDs can still be economical. Only a quarter of lighting is domestic. Businesses and public organisations are more aware of running costs than householders are—and besides the electricity bill they also have to pay people to change bulbs that have failed. For the bulbs to be embraced by households, though, LED costs will need to come down.

the biggest cost reduction will come from breakthroughs like that recently made by the Centre for Gallium Nitride at Cambridge University, England. Gallium nitride is a semiconductor used to create bright-blue LEDs. These can be made to emit white light by coating the device with a phosphor compound that absorbs part of the blue light and re-emits it as yellow. When combined with the rest of the blue this forms a cool, white light. Most of the white LEDs now on the market are based on gallium nitride.

At present these LEDs are made in machines similar to those used to make silicon chips, by depositing layers of gallium nitride on sapphire-based wafers. Sapphire is robust enough to withstand a process that first heats it to 1,000°C and then cools it to room temperature without causing cracks and other defects. It is, however, quite expensive. What Colin Humphreys and his colleagues at Cambridge have come up with is a reliable way to deposit gallium nitride on much cheaper silicon wafers, which they estimate could cut production costs to a tenth of what they are at the moment.

Because the atomic lattice structure of gallium nitride is better matched to sapphire than it is to silicon, making LEDs on silicon without distortions has proved extremely tricky. The technique used at Cambridge involves depositing additional layers of gallium nitride-based materials, one as a “compression layer” to provide greater resilience and another as an ultra-thin mask that increases the accuracy of fabrication. The important measure of success is the internal quantum efficiency, which shows just how good an LED is at making light. A gallium nitride LED on sapphire has a typical internal quantum efficiency of around 70%. In the past year, Dr Humphreys’s team has improved its silicon-based ones from 15% to 45%.

They will get better still, reckons Dr Humphreys. Yet even at this early stage he thinks gallium nitride-on-silicon LEDs would make commercial sense. Besides the lower cost of silicon, the process could also use larger and more economical six-inch (15cm) wafers and be carried out with more common fabrication equipment.

A number of companies are working with Dr Humphreys to commercialise the process. The techniques employed might also help to improve LEDs that produce white light by mixing red, green and blue emitters. These can be modified to produce different colours of light, too, but they have not taken off quickly because they can be hard to package. It is also difficult to maintain consistent outputs from the different LEDs so light from the devices tends to drift into off-white hues.

Developments like the use of cheap silicon make the case for switching to LED lighting even more compelling. About 20% of the world’s electricity is used for lighting. America’s Department of Energy thinks that, with LEDs, this could be cut in half by 2025, saving more than 130 new power stations in America alone.

Low-cost LEDs would also bring light to new areas. Philips, for instance, is planning to launch a small solar-powered LED reading light for Africa, where an estimated 500m people live without electricity. The simplest version, which it hopes to sell for less than $15, is designed to allow children to do their homework in the evenings without a candle or smoky kerosene lamp. Bringing down the cost of LEDs this way really will let in the light.

- from economist

A £1bn nuclear white elephant

A controversial nuclear recycling plant, approved by the Government despite warnings over its economic viability and reliance on unproven technology, has racked up costs of more than £1bn and is still not working properly.

Backers of the plant at Sellafield, which promised to turn toxic waste into a useable fuel that could be sold worldwide, had claimed the plant would make a profit of more than £200m in its lifetime, producing 120 tonnes of recycled fuel a year. But after an investigation by The Independent, the Government admitted technical problems and a dearth in orders has meant it has produced just 6.3 tonnes of fuel since opening in 2001.

With construction and commissioning costs of more than £600m, the facility, known as the Mox plant because of the mixed oxides (Mox) fuel it is designed to produce, has cost more than £1.2bn, confirming its status as the nuclear industry’s most embarrassing white elephant and one of the greatest failures in British industrial history, losing the taxpayer £90m a year. Green campaigners and opposition MPs are now calling for the plant to be closed immediately, and a minister who fought its construction at the time has called for a public inquiry into how the plant was ever given the go-ahead.

The revelations are a blow to the Government as it plans to lead Britain into a “nuclear renaissance”, pinning its hopes on nuclear technology to help meet its ambitious targets on reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. A spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said the performance of the plant was “clearly disappointing”.

The Government had tried to keep details of the plant’s losses private. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), the publicly funded body which owns the plant, initally refused to release details of the losses, citing confidentiality agreements in commercial contracts. But in a table published by the Government on the day of the G20 summit, the embarrassing extent of the plant’s losses was finally disclosed.

Michael Meacher, who tried to block approval for the plant as Environment minister, said: “This waste of taxpayer’s money is unforgivable. The construction of the plant was resisted for years. But that was overridden by Tony Blair on the basis of assurances from the nuclear industry that the Mox plant would be cost-effective and a market for its fuel would develop.

“These claims have proved illusory. But even the most pessimistic judgement never predicted that the first decade of its operations would fritter away two-thirds of a billion pounds on generating no more than 4 per cent of its target production. There should be a public inquiry into this scandal and those responsible should be held to account.”

Speculation has now grown that Ed Miliband, the Climate Change Secretary, is preparing to bite the bullet and close the plant, which has faced five public consultations, legal challenges and safety concerns. The NDA admits the future of the plant is “under review”.

Opposition MPs slammed the performance of the facility. “The Mox plant at Sellafield has proved to be a costly white elephant and a black hole for taxpayers’ money,” said Simon Hughes, the climate change spokesman for the Liberal Democrats. “This is a prime example of Labour’s misguided and hugely expensive continuing love affair with nuclear power. Building a new generation of nuclear power stations is throwing billions of pounds of good money after bad. They are never built on time or on budget and they will not solve the UK’s energy needs.”

The plant has had an unhappy history. As soon as it was proposed in the 1990s, Greenpeace raised concerns about the safety of reprocessing used uranium and plutonium, and then transporting the weapons-grade material to customers around the world. Scientists, economists and MPs also questioned the financial viability of the project. Though the Government approved the plant on the basis that it would return a profit of about £216m over its lifetime, that figure did not take into account the £500m construction costs.

The plant was dealt a further blow in 1999, when The Independent revealed that workers at Sellafield had falsified quality-control data on Mox fuel. Unsurprisingly, customers in Japan, the country that the Government believed would provide the bulk of orders for the fuel produced by its new plant, lost confidence. It left a gaping hole in the Mox plant’s order book which has never been filled.

Since it opened in 2001, the plant’s complex recycling procedure has also been dogged by breakdowns and on-going difficulties. At present, production problems are being experienced in making “fuel assemblies”, the final stage of production in making the fuel. Despite the problems, the Government refused to acknowledge difficulties at the plant. Even after serious issues had emerged by 2004, it still argued that the economic and environmental case for the plant was as “strong as ever”. Campaigners believe the final bill for the plant will be even higher by the time it is closed, because decommissioning the facility will also cost millions. “This is a staggering waste of taxpayers’ money, and we doubt that these will be the full costs of this sorry saga,” said Nathan Argent, head of Greenpeace’s energy solutions unit.

“Just imagine what the renewable sector could have done with a subsidy like that. The spectacular failure of the Mox plant is just another reminder of why the nuclear industry has become notorious for making wildly misleading financial claims.

“For years, we urged the Government to treat the industry’s predictions with the scepticism they deserved, but our pleas fell on deaf ears. Once again the same tired old lines about sparkling new equipment are wrapped in make-believe financial forecasts, and ministers are swallowing it hook, line and sinker.”

- from independent. 7 Apr 2009

Wasted time for power

- from Greenpeace

Another middle east

The so-called “forgotten war,” the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, is threatening to explode once again, away from the glare of any international media attention.

The fighting between Nkunda’s forces and the Congolese army has increased since August, in part over the government’s alleged alliance with Hutu militias from Rwanda. Nkunda claims to be defending ethnic Tutsis in the area, and the Rwandan government has accused the DRC of supporting militias responsible for the 1994 genocide of Tutsis. Rwanda has invaded the DRC three times in the past twelve years, twice sparking civil wars.

The latest round of fighting has seen a dramatic rise in the number of rapes, and some 200,000 people have been displaced since August, according to the World Food Program. That’s in addition to the nearly 1.5 million people already displaced from this part of the country since 2007.

Bringing attention to the dire situation in the Congo and the role of Western corporations in fueling the conflict was the focus of Congo Week, an awareness-raising week of events last week across the country on campuses.

---

The really main important things that people should know that is the war in the Congo is directly connected to the United States, as far as resource exploitation is concerned. What we wanted to do, coming out of Congo Week and—is to show that connection, as well as be able to provide enough information to the world community and the US-based universities on how they can help support the Congolese to regain the sovereignty on the land, understanding that the conflict in the Congo is based on resource exploitation, which we’re seeing in the later years from the invasion of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi in the eastern part of the Congo.

There are numerous firms. Dan Rather report that just came out last month about “All Mine.” Freeport-McMoRan, out of Phoenix, Arizona, they are exploiting the copper out of the Congo. Dan Rather did a wonderful job showing how Freeport-McMoRan is doing so. Cabot Corporation out of Boston, Massachusetts, is another company that was mentioned in the UN report of 2001 and 2003 on the exploitation of coltan, and coltan being a resources that’s found in virtually every electronic device, such as cell phones, laptop, DVD players.

And understanding that the root cause of the conflict in the Congo is the scramble for Congo’s mineral resources is what actually is making us, the youth of the Congo, to go out to the world and be able to connect with people a good way, of letting them know that the strife is not more so of an ethnic strife, but more so of the scramble for Congo’s mineral resources.

The rapes are a direct result of the war. We’re seeing it—the latest spasm that we’re seeing right now has been going on since ’96. The rapes, the murders, they all are being done as a way of mass displacement, if you have to put it in the context. As one person is brutalized in a community, the people in the neighborhood will be afraid, and that will cause them to be displaced. As you mentioned, we have about 1.5 million people internally displaced in the Congo. As this strategy has been used in the eastern part, we’re seeing masses of people being displaced from the villages, from the cities, simply because they live in a area rich of minerals. Now we’re seeing it very clearly, The Virunga Park was taken over yesterday, simply because there are resources that Laurent Nkunda exploit into the Virunga Park.

So, to end the rape, you must end the conflict. And to end the conflict, you must stop the resource exploitation of the Congo, thus creating a platforms for the Congolese people to be sovereign and free. And a few prescriptions that I may mention would be to put pressure on Rwanda, because we do know that Rwanda is supporting proxy forces in the eastern part of the Congo. And we can use such people who have Kagame’s ear, such as Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Cindy McCain, Rick Warren, to put pressure on Kagame to make sure that not—we do not see another nearly six million people dying in the eastern part of the Congo simply because of a blessing of land. The people who are exploiting those resources are cursed, as they continue to create the conflict at the detriment of the Congolese people.

What we have asked people to do to show the connection with coltan is to turn off their cell phone last week on Wednesday, October 22nd, and change their voice mail, because we believe that people will call their phones still, and explaining why their phone is off during that day. Our aim, really, during the cell phone boycott, is to raise awareness about what’s happening in the Congo, and using the cell phone as a messaging tool was very, very successful. We had students in New Zealand, a high school in Avonside, that actually did that perfectly, getting the whole high school to participate in that. So, our aim into the cell out, as well as Congo Week, is basically to end the conflict and provide support to the Congolese people in their quest to regain sovereignty of their land.

Discussion: Kambale Musavuli, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez

Kambale Musavuli, Congolese engineering student at North Carolina A&T University. He helped coordinate Congo Week with the group Friends of the Congo.

- from democracynow. 27 Oct 2008

The problem with middle east also same. Resource full land.
When will the rich become satisfied?
Please reduce oil use. Reduce travel.
Please reduce buying new electronic gadgets. Reuse old ones.

Working Class in US

we started out calling them the working poor, and we found that really it wasn’t the best term, because we want to work in a way that engages people in the process, and when—nobody wants to be poor. Nobody wants to be called poor or low-wage. So when we started out talking about the working poor or low-wage workers, we came, in the course of conversations with these workers, to understand that maybe it would be better to find another way to talk about it. So that’s why we came up with this formulation “economically distressed,” which really talks about the content of their lives, rather than something which might get turned into an epithet.

these economically distressed workers are people whose incomes are so low that they can’t get out of the bottom of their own housing market in their area for a family of their size without spending more than 30 percent of their income to do that. And the federal standard is 30 percent. You shouldn’t spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing. Otherwise you won’t have enough money for everything else that you need. So that’s how we look at the problem.

And we found that in the United States, it’s almost 21 percent of the labor force are people who are in this economically distressed status, and it varies. In metropolitan areas, it’s higher. Here in New York, it’s in New York metropolitan area, 29.4 percent of the families and households in the New York metro area are economically distressed. And it goes as high as—in Miami, it’s 32.4 percent. So, in Los Angeles, it’s 31 percent. So we’re talking about really a lot of people who are in a very, very serious situation.
-Michael Zweig

the phrase “working class” is kind of forbidden from political talk in the United States, because it’s—people are going to be accused of being class warriors. So, unfortunately, that phrase is rarely used. But I think, you know, the catch phrase is the middle class, and they’re both focusing on the middle class. But we have this ever-expansive definition of what the middle class is: people from $20,000 a year to $200,000 a year.
Washington was ignoring the squeeze on the nation’s workers.
- Steve Greenhouse

there is a discussion, of course, of class war; every time anybody talks about redistributing income down, “Oh, that’s class warfare.” Well, yes, it is class warfare to redistribute the income up. We’ve been living for thirty-five years in a period of intense class warfare, except the working class has been losing. And part of that class warfare is to deny that there are classes and to deny that any of this dynamic is actually happening, so that people’s attention are shifted elsewhere. And that’s why I think that it’s so important to keep talking about and bringing back into focus what is actually happening with working people in this country.
-Michael Zweig

sort of remedy that was provided by the New Deal in 1935, through passage of the National Labor Relations Act, which labor is trying to amend now through enactment of the Employee Free Choice Act, and that is a strengthening of workers’ collective bargaining rights.
- Steve Early

It seems that there’s been almost an unwritten agreement among both candidates and the media not to ask Obama or McCain about their immigration policies since the primaries. Once the primaries were over, the debate is over, in terms of the national debate.

They don’t need to get into it. And each has enough in them in their backgrounds and in their programs that Lou Dobbs and that whole militant anti-immigrant crowd is going to be dissatisfied with both of them, so why get into it?
I will say that in the immigration situation, whatever happens, we want to make sure that there isn’t a two-tier labor force that we have in this country, where the immigrants, in whatever form they’re here, as guest workers or in whatever guise we sort of allow them to come into America, that they are some second-class labor citizen.
-Michael Zweig

You look back at the history of labor law reform efforts over the last thirty years, under Clinton and Carter, a lot of disappointment and a record of failure. It’s going to take a tremendous grassroots movement, now and then, by organized workers to keep the pressure on Obama and the Democrats to make this long overdue change so that workers can organize more freely without management interference. It’s not a done deal. And I think Obama would prefer to avoid a knockdown, drag-out fight with corporate America over this issue right out of the box.
- Steve Early

Discussion: Michael Zweig, Steven Greenhouse, Steve Early, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez

Michael Zweig, Professor of economics and director of the Center for Study of Working Class Life at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His most recent book is What’s Class Got to Do with It?: American Society in the Twenty-First Century.

Steven Greenhouse, labor and workplace reporter for the New York Times, and author of the new book The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker.

Steve Early, Boston-based labor journalist and the author of a forthcoming book for Monthly Review Press called Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home. For twenty-seven years, he was an organizer for the Communications Workers of America.

- from democracynow. 27 Oct 2008

Reversal of Fortune

Reversal of Fortune
By Bill McKibben

for most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. That’s why the centuries since Adam Smith launched modern economics with his book The Wealth of Nations have been so single-mindedly devoted to the dogged pursuit of maximum economic production. Smith’s core ideas—that individuals pursuing their own interests in a market society end up making each other richer; and that increasing efficiency, usually by increasing scale, is the key to increasing wealth—have indisputably worked. They’ve produced more More than he could ever have imagined. They’ve built the unprecedented prosperity and ease that distinguish the lives of most of the people reading these words. It is no wonder and no accident that Smith’s ideas still dominate our politics, our outlook, even our personalities.

But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest. And that changes everything. Now, with the stone of your life or your society gripped in your hand, you have to choose. It’s More or Better.

Which means, according to new research emerging from many quarters, that our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually. Growth no longer makes most people wealthier, but instead generates inequality and insecurity. Growth is bumping up against physical limits so profound—like climate change and peak oil—that trying to keep expanding the economy may be not just impossible but also dangerous. And perhaps most surprisingly, growth no longer makes us happier. Given our current dogma, that’s as bizarre an idea as proposing that gravity pushes apples skyward. But then, even Newtonian physics eventually shifted to acknowledge Einstein’s more complicated universe.

1. “We can do it if we believe it”: FDR, LBJ, and the invention of growth

it was the great economist John Maynard Keynes who pointed out that until very recently, “there was no very great change in the standard of life of the average man living in the civilized centers of the earth.” At the utmost, Keynes calculated, the standard of living roughly doubled between 2000 B.C. and the dawn of the 18th century—four millennia during which we basically didn’t learn to do much of anything new. Before history began, we had already figured out fire, language, cattle, the wheel, the plow, the sail, the pot. We had banks and governments and mathematics and religion.

And then, something new finally did happen. In 1712, a British inventor named Thomas Newcomen created the first practical steam engine. Over the centuries that followed, fossil fuels helped create everything we consider normal and obvious about the modern world, from electricity to steel to fertilizer; now, a 100 percent jump in the standard of living could suddenly be accomplished in a few decades, not a few millennia.

In some ways, the invention of the idea of economic growth was almost as significant as the invention of fossil-fuel power. But it took a little longer to take hold. During the Depression, even FDR routinely spoke of America’s economy as mature, with no further expansion anticipated. Then came World War II and the postwar boom—by the time Lyndon Johnson moved into the White House in 1963, he said things like: “I’m sick of all the people who talk about the things we can’t do. Hell, we’re the richest country in the world, the most powerful. We can do it all…. We can do it if we believe it.” He wasn’t alone in thinking this way. From Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev thundered, “Growth of industrial and agricultural production is the battering ram with which we shall smash the capitalist system.”

Yet the bad news was already apparent, if you cared to look. Burning rivers and smoggy cities demonstrated the dark side of industrial expansion. In 1972, a trio of mit researchers released a series of computer forecasts they called “limits to growth,” which showed that unbridled expansion would eventually deplete our resource base. A year later the British economist E.F. Schumacher wrote the best-selling Small Is Beautiful. (Soon after, when Schumacher came to the United States on a speaking tour, Jimmy Carter actually received him at the White House—imagine the current president making time for any economist.) By 1979, the sociologist Amitai Etzioni reported to President Carter that only 30 percent of Americans were “pro-growth,” 31 percent were “anti-growth,” and 39 percent were “highly uncertain.”

Such ambivalence, Etzioni predicted, “is too stressful for societies to endure,” and Ronald Reagan proved his point. He convinced us it was “Morning in America”—out with limits, in with Trump. Today, mainstream liberals and conservatives compete mainly on the question of who can flog the economy harder. Larry Summers, who served as Bill Clinton’s secretary of the treasury, at one point declared that the Clinton administration “cannot and will not accept any ’speed limit’ on American economic growth. It is the task of economic policy to grow the economy as rapidly, sustainably, and inclusively as possible.” It’s the economy, stupid.

2. Oil bingeing, Chinese cars, and the end of the easy fix

except there are three small things. The first I’ll mention mostly in passing: Even though the economy continues to grow, most of us are no longer getting wealthier. The average wage in the United States is less now, in real dollars, than it was 30 years ago. Even for those with college degrees, andlthough productivity was growing faster than it had for decades, between 2000 and 2004 earnings fell 5.2 percent when adjusted for inflation, according to the most recent data from White House economists. Much the same thing has happened across most of the globe. More than 60 countries around the world, in fact, have seen incomes per capita fall in the past decade.

For the second point, it’s useful to remember what Thomas Newcomen was up to when he helped launch the Industrial Revolution—burning coal to pump water out of a coal mine. This revolution both depended on, and revolved around, fossil fuels. “Before coal,” writes the economist Jeffrey Sachs, “economic production was limited by energy inputs, almost all of which depended on the production of biomass: food for humans and farm animals, and fuel wood for heating and certain industrial processes.” That is, energy depended on how much you could grow. But fossil energy depended on how much had grown eons before—all those billions of tons of ancient biology squashed by the weight of time till they’d turned into strata and pools and seams of hydrocarbons, waiting for us to discover them.

To understand how valuable, and irreplaceable, that lake of fuel was, consider a few other forms of creating usable energy. Ethanol can perfectly well replace gasoline in a tank; like petroleum, it’s a way of using biology to create energy, and right now it’s a hot commodity, backed with billions of dollars of government subsidies. But ethanol relies on plants that grow anew each year, most often corn; by the time you’ve driven your tractor to tend the fields, and your truck to carry the crop to the refinery, and powered your refinery, the best-case “energy output-to-input ratio” is something like 1.34-to-1. You’ve spent 100 Btu of fossil energy to get 134 Btu. Perhaps that’s worth doing, but as Kamyar Enshayan of the University of Northern Iowa points out, “it’s not impressive” compared to the ratio for oil, which ranges from 30-to-1 to 200-to-1, depending on where you drill it. To go from our fossil-fuel world to a biomass world would be a little like leaving the Garden of Eden for the land where bread must be earned by “the sweat of your brow.”

And east of Eden is precisely where we may be headed. As everyone knows, the past three years have seen a spate of reports and books and documentaries suggesting that humanity may have neared or passed its oil peak—that is, the point at which those pools of primeval plankton are half used up, where each new year brings us closer to the bottom of the barrel. The major oil companies report that they can’t find enough new wells most years to offset the depletion in the old ones; rumors circulate that the giant Saudi fields are dwindling faster than expected; and, of course, all this is reflected in the cost of oil.

The doctrinaire economist’s answer is that no particular commodity matters all that much, because if we run short of something, it will pay for someone to develop a substitute. In general this has proved true in the past: Run short of nice big sawlogs and someone invents plywood. But it’s far from clear that the same precept applies to coal, oil, and natural gas. This time, there is no easy substitute: I like the solar panels on my roof, but they’re collecting diffuse daily energy, not using up eons of accumulated power. Fossil fuel was an exception to the rule, a one-time gift that underwrote a one-time binge of growth.

This brings us to the third point: If we do try to keep going, with the entire world aiming for an economy structured like America’s, it won’t be just oil that we’ll run short of. Here are the numbers we have to contend with: Given current rates of growth in the Chinese economy, the 1.3 billion residents of that nation alone will, by 2031, be about as rich as we are. If they then eat meat, milk, and eggs at the rate that we do, calculates ecostatistician Lester Brown, they will consume 1,352 million tons of grain each year—equal to two-thirds of the world’s entire 2004 grain harvest. They will use 99 million barrels of oil a day, 15 million more than the entire world consumes at present. They will use more steel than all the West combined, double the world’s production of paper, and drive 1.1 billion cars—1.5 times as many as the current world total. And that’s just China; by then, India will have a bigger population, and its economy is growing almost as fast. And then there’s the rest of the world.

Trying to meet that kind of demand will stress the earth past its breaking point in an almost endless number of ways, but let’s take just one. When Thomas Newcomen fired up his pump on that morning in 1712, the atmosphere contained 275 parts per million of carbon dioxide. We’re now up to 380 parts per million, a level higher than the earth has seen for many millions of years, and climate change has only just begun. The median predictions of the world’s climatologists—by no means the worst-case scenario—show that unless we take truly enormous steps to rein in our use of fossil fuels, we can expect average temperatures to rise another four or five degrees before the century is out, making the globe warmer than it’s been since long before primates appeared. We might as well stop calling it earth and have a contest to pick some new name, because it will be a different planet. Humans have never done anything more profound, not even when we invented nuclear weapons.

How does this tie in with economic growth? Clearly, getting rich means getting dirty—that’s why, when I was in Beijing recently, I could stare straight at the sun (once I actually figured out where in the smoggy sky it was). But eventually, getting rich also means wanting the “luxury” of clean air and finding the technological means to achieve it. Which is why you can once again see the mountains around Los Angeles; why more of our rivers are swimmable every year. And economists have figured out clever ways to speed this renewal: Creating markets for trading pollution credits, for instance, helped cut those sulfur and nitrogen clouds more rapidly and cheaply than almost anyone had imagined.

But getting richer doesn’t lead to producing less carbon dioxide in the same way that it does to less smog—in fact, so far it’s mostly the reverse. Environmental destruction of the old-fashioned kind—dirty air, dirty water—results from something going wrong. You haven’t bothered to stick the necessary filter on your pipes, and so the crud washes into the stream; a little regulation, and a little money, and the problem disappears. But the second, deeper form of environmental degradation comes from things operating exactly as they’re supposed to, just too much so. Carbon dioxide is an inevitable byproduct of burning coal or gas or oil—not something going wrong. Researchers are struggling to figure out costly and complicated methods to trap some CO2 and inject it intdlderground mines—but for all practical purposes, the vast majority of the world’s cars and factories and furnaces will keep belching more and more of it into the atmosphere as long as we burn more and more fossil fuels.

True, as companies and countries get richer, they can afford more efficient machinery that makes better use of fossil fuel, like the hybrid Honda Civic I drive. But if your appliances have gotten more efficient, there are also far more of them: The furnace is better than it used to be, but the average size of the house it heats has doubled since 1950. The 60-inch TV? The always-on cable modem? No need for you to do the math—the electric company does it for you, every month. Between 1990 and 2003, precisely the years in which we learned about the peril presented by global warming, the United States’ annual carbon dioxide emissions increased by 16 percent. And the momentum to keep going in that direction is enormous. For most of us, growth has become synonymous with the economy’s “health,” which in turn seems far more palpable than the health of the planet. Think of the terms we use—the economy, whose temperature we take at every newscast via the Dow Jones average, is “ailing” or it’s “on the mend.” It’s “slumping” or it’s “in recovery.” We cosset and succor its every sniffle with enormous devotion, even as we more or less ignore the increasingly urgent fever that the globe is now running. The ecological economists have an enormous task ahead of them—a nearly insurmountable task, if it were “merely” the environment that is in peril. But here is where things get really interesting. It turns out that the economics of environmental destruction are closely linked to another set of leading indicators—ones that most humans happen to care a great deal about.

3. “It seems that well-being is a real phenomenon”: Economists discover hedonics

traditionally, happiness and satisfaction are the sort of notions that economists wave aside as poetic irrelevance, the kind of questions that occupy people with no head for numbers who had to major in liberal arts. An orthodox economist has a simple happiness formula: If you buy a Ford Expedition, then ipso facto a Ford Expedition is what makes you happy. That’s all we need to know. The economist would call this idea “utility maximization,” and in the words of the economic historian Gordon Bigelow, “the theory holds that every time a person buys something, sells something, quits a job, or invests, he is making a rational decision about what will…provide him ‘maximum utility.’ If you bought a Ginsu knife at 3 a.m. a neoclassical economist will tell you that, at that time, you calculated that this purchase would optimize your resources.” The beauty of this principle lies in its simplicity. It is perhaps the central assumption of the world we live in: You can tell who I really am by what I buy.

Yet economists have long known that people’s brains don’t work quite the way the model suggests. When Bob Costanza, one of the fathers of ecological economics and now head of the Gund Institute at the University of Vermont, was first edging into economics in the early 1980s, he had a fellowship to study “social traps”—the nuclear arms race, say—in which “short-term behavior can get out of kilter with longer broad-term goals.”

It didn’t take long for Costanza to demonstrate, as others had before him, that, if you set up an auction in a certain way, people will end up bidding $1.50 to take home a dollar. Other economists have shown that people give too much weight to “sunk costs”—that they’re too willing to throw good money after bad, or that they value items more highly if they already own them than if they are considering acquiring them. Building on such insights, a school of “behavioral economics” has emerged in recent years and begun plumbing how we really behave.

The wonder is that it took so long. We all know in our own lives how irrationally we are capable of acting, and how unconnected those actions are to any real sense of joy. (I mean, there you are at 3 a.m. thinking about the Ginsu knife.) But until fairly recently, we had no alternatives to relying on Ginsu knife and Ford Expedition purchases as the sole measures of our satisfaction. How else would we know what made people happy?

That’s where things are now changing dramatically: Researchers from a wide variety of disciplines have started to figure out how to assess satisfaction, and economists have begun to explore the implications. In 2002 Princeton’s Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics even though he is trained as a psychologist. In the book Well-Being, he and a pair of coauthors announce a new field called “hedonics,” defined as “the study of what makes experiences and life pleasant or unpleasant…. It is also concerned with the whole range of circumstances, from the biological to the societal, that occasion suffering and enjoyment.” If you are worried that there might be something altogether too airy about this, be reassured—Kahneman thinks like an economist. In the book’s very first chapter, “Objective Happiness,” he describes an experiment that compares “records of the pain reported by two patients undergoing colonoscopy,” wherein every 60 seconds he insists they rate their pain on a scale of 1 to 10 and eventually forces them to make “a hypothetical choice between a repeat colonoscopy and a barium enema.” Dismal science indeed.

As more scientists have turned their attention to the field, researchers have studied everything from “biases in recall of menstrual symptoms” to “fearlessness and courage in novice paratroopers.” Subjects have had to choose between getting an “attractive candy bar” and learning the answers to geography questions; they’ve been made to wear devices that measured their blood pressure at regular intervals; their brains have been scanned. And by now that’s been enough to convince most observers that saying “I’m happy” is more than just a subjective statement. In the words of the economist Richard Layard, “We now know that what people say about how they feel corresponds closely to the actual levels of activity in different parts of the brain, which can be measured in standard scientific ways.” Indeed, people who call themselves happy, or who have relatively high levels of electrical activity in the left prefrontal region of the brain, are also “more likely to be rated as happy by friends,” “more likely to respond to requests for help,” “less likely to be involved in disputes at work,” and even “less likely to die prematurely.” In other words, conceded one economist, “it seems that what the psychologists call subjective well-being is a real phenomenon. The various empirical measures of it have high consistency, reliability, and validity.”

The idea that there is a state called happiness, and that we can dependably figure out what it feels like and how to measure it, is extremely subversive. It allows economists to start thinking about life in richer (indeed) terms, to stop asking “What did you buy?” and to start asking “Is your life good?” And if you can ask someone “Is your life good?” and count on the answer to mean something, then you’ll be able to move to the real heart of the matter, the question haunting our moment on the earth: Is more better?

4. If we’re so rich, how come we’re so damn miserable?

in some sense, you could say that the years since World War II in America have been a loosely controlled experiment designed to answer this very question. The environmentalist Alan Durning found that in 1991 the average American family owned twice as many cars as it did in 1950, drove 2.5 times as far, used 21 times as much plastic, and traveled 25 times farther by air. Gross national product per capita tripled during that period. Our houses are bigger than ever and stuffed to the rafters with belongings (which is why the storage-locker industry has doubled in size in the past decade). We have all sorts of other new delights and powers—we can send email from our cars, watch 200 channels, consume food from every corner of the world. Some people have taken much more than their share, but on average, all of us in the West are living lives materially more abundant than most people a generation ago.

What’s odd is, none of it appears to have made us happier. Throughout the postwar years, even as the gnp curve has steadily climbed, the “life satisfaction” index has stayed exactly the same. Since 1972, the National Opinion Research Center has surveyed Americans on the question: “Taking all things together, how would you say things are these days—would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” (This must be a somewhat unsettling interview.) The “very happy” number peaked at 38 percent in the 1974 poll, amid oil shock and economic malaise; it now hovers right around 33 percent.

And it’s not that we’re simply recalibrating our sense of what happiness means—we are actively experiencing life as grimmer. In the winter of 2006 the National Opinion Research Center published data about “negative life events” comparing 1991 and 2004, two data points bracketing an economic boom. “The anticipation would have been that problems would have been down,” the study’s author said. Instead it showed a rise in problems—for instance, the percentage who reported breaking up with a steady partner almost doubled. As one reporter summarized the findings, “There’s more misery in people’s lives today.”

This decline in the happiness index is not confined to the United States; as other nations have followed us into mass affluence, their experiences have begun to yield similar results. In the United Kingdom, real gross domestic product per capita grew two-thirds between 1973 and 2001, but people’s satisfaction with their lives changed not one whit. Japan saw a fourfold increase in real income per capita between 1958 and 1986 without any reported increase in satisfaction. In one place after another, rates of alcoholism, suicide, and depression have gone up dramatically, even as we keep accumulating more stuff. Indeed, one report in 2000 found that the average American child reported higher levels of anxiety than the average child under psychiatric care in the 1950s—our new normal is the old disturbed.

If happiness was our goal, then the unbelievable amount of effort and resources expended in its pursuit since 1950 has been largely a waste. One study of life satisfaction and mental health by Emory University professor Corey Keyes found just 17 percent of Americans “flourishing,” in mental health terms, and 26 percent either “languishing” or out-and-out depressed.

5. Danes (and Mexicans, the Amish, and the Masai) just want to have fun

how is it, then, that we became so totally, and apparently wrongly, fixated on the idea that our main goal, as individuals and as nations, should be the accumulation of more wealth? The answer is interesting for what it says about human nature. Up to a certain point, more really does equal better. Imagine briefly your life as a poor person in a poor society—say, a peasant farmer in China. (China has one-fourth of the world’s farmers, but one-fourteenth of its arable land; the average farm in the southern part of the country is about half an acre, or barely more than the standard lot for a new American home.) You likely have the benefits of a close and connected family, and a village environment where your place is clear. But you lack any modicum of security for when you get sick or old or your back simply gives out. Your diet is unvaried and nutritionally lacking; you’re almost always cold in winter.

In a world like that, a boost in income delivers tangible benefits. In general, researchers report that money consistently buys happiness right up to about $10,000 income per capita. That’s a useful number to keep in the back of your head—it’s like the freezing point of water, one of those random figures that just happens to define a crucial phenomenon on our planet. “As poor countries like India, Mexico, the Philippines, Brazil, and South Korea have experienced economic growth, there is some evidence that their average happiness has risen,” the economist Layard reports. Past $10,000 (per capita, mind you—that is, the average for each man, woman, and child), there’s a complete scattering: When the Irish were making two-thirds as much as Americans they were reporting higher levels of satisfaction, as were the Swedes, the Danes, the Dutch. Mexicans score higher than the Japanese; the French are about as satisfied with their lives as the Venezuelans. In fact, once basic needs are met, the “satisfaction” data scrambles in mindlnding ways. A sampling of Forbes magazine’s “richest Americans” have identical happiness scores with Pennsylvania Amish, and are only a whisker above Swedes taken as a whole, not to mention the Masai. The “life satisfaction” of pavement dwellers—homeless people—in Calcutta is among the lowest recorded, but it almost doubles when they move into a slum, at which point they are basically as satisfied with their lives as a sample of college students drawn from 47 nations. And so on.

On the list of major mistakes we’ve made as a species, this one seems pretty high up. Our single-minded focus on increasing wealth has succeeded in driving the planet’s ecological systems to the brink of failure, even as it’s failed to make us happier. How did we screw up?

The answer is pretty obvious—we kept doing something past the point that it worked. Since happiness had increased with income in the past, we assumed it would inevitably do so in the future. We make these kinds of mistakes regularly: Two beers made me feel good, so ten will make me feel five times better. But this case was particularly extreme—in part because as a species, we’ve spent so much time simply trying to survive. As the researchers Ed Diener and Martin Seligman—both psychologists—observe, “At the time of Adam Smith, a concern with economic issues was understandably primary. Meeting simple human needs for food, shelter and clothing was not assured, and satisfying these needs moved in lockstep with better economics.” Freeing people to build a more dynamic economy was radical and altruistic.

Consider Americans in 1820, two generations after Adam Smith. The average citizen earned, in current dollars, less than $1,500 a year, which is somewhere near the current average for all of Africa. As the economist Deirdre McCloskey explains in a 2004 article in the magazine Christian Century, “Your great-great-great-grandmother had one dress for church and one for the week, if she were not in rags. Her children did not attend school, and probably could not read. She and her husband worked eighty hours a week for a diet of bread and milk—they were four inches shorter than you.” Even in 1900, the average American lived in a house the size of today’s typical garage. Is it any wonder that we built up considerable velocity trying to escape the gravitational pull of that kind of poverty? An object in motion stays in motion, and our economy—with the built-up individual expectations that drive it—is a mighty object indeed.

You could call it, I think, the Laurdlgalls Wilder effect. I grew up reading her books—Little House on the Prairie, Little House in the Big Woods—and my daughter grew up listening to me read them to her, and no doubt she will read them to her children. They are the ur-American story. And what do they tell? Of a life rich in family, rich in connection to the natural world, rich in adventure—but materially deprived. That one dress, that same bland dinner. At Christmastime, a penny—a penny! And a stick of candy, and the awful deliberation about whether to stretch it out with tiny licks or devour it in an orgy of happy greed. A rag doll was the zenith of aspiration. My daughter likes dolls too, but her bedroom boasts a density of Beanie Babies that mimics the manic biodiversity of the deep rainforest. Another one? Really, so what? Its marginal utility, as an economist might say, is low. And so it is with all of us. We just haven’t figured that out because the momentum of the past is still with us—we still imagine we’re in that little house on the big prairie.

6. This year’s model home: “Good for the dysfunctional family”

that great momentum has carried us away from something valuable, something priceless: It has allowed us to become (very nearly forced us to become) more thoroughly individualistic than we really wanted to be. We left behind hundreds of thousands of years of human community for the excitement, and the isolation, of “making something of ourselves,” an idea that would not have made sense for 99.9 percent of human history. Adam Smith’s insight was that the interests of each of our individual selves could add up, almost in spite of themselves, to social good—to longer lives, fuller tables, warmer houses. Suddenly the community was no longer necessary to provide these things; they would happen as if by magic. And they did happen. And in many ways it was good.

But this process of liberation seems to have come close to running its course. Study after study shows Americans spending less time with friends and family, either working longer hours, or hunched over their computers at night. And each year, as our population grows by 1 percent we manage to spread ourselves out over 6 to 8 percent more land. Simple mathematics says that we’re less and less likely to bump into the other inhabitants of our neighborhood, or indeed of our own homes. As the Wall Street Journal reported recently, “Major builders and top architects are walling people off. They’re touting one-person ‘Internet alcoves,’ locked-door ‘away rooms,’ and his-and-her offices on opposite ends of the house. The new floor plans offer so much seclusion, they’re ‘good for the dysfunctional family,’ says Gopal Ahluwahlia, director of research for the National Association of Home Builders.” At the building industry’s annual Las Vegas trade show, the “showcase ‘Ultimate Family Home’ hardly had a family room,” noted the Journal. Instead, the boy’s personal playroom had its own 42-inch plasma TV, and the girl’s bedroom had a secret mirrored door leading to a “hideaway karaoke room.” “We call this the ultimate home for families who don’t want anything to do with one another,” said Mike McGee, chief executive of Pardee Homes of Los Angeles, builder of the model.

This transition from individualism to hyper-individualism also made its presence felt in politics. In the 1980s, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher asked, “Who is society? There is no such thing. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” Talk about everything solid melting into air—Thatcher’s maxim would have spooked Adam Smith himself. The “public realm”—things like parks and schools and Social Security, the last reminders of the communities from which we came—is under steady and increasing attack. Instead of contributing to the shared risk of health insurance, Americans are encouraged to go it alone with “health savings accounts.” Hell, even the nation’s most collectivist institution, the U.S. military, until recently recruited under the slogan an “Army of One.” No wonder the show that changed television more than any other in the past decade was Survivor, where the goal is to end up alone on the island, to manipulate and scheme until everyone is banished and leaves you by yourself with your money.

It’s not so hard, then, to figure out why happiness has declined here even as wealth has grown. During the same decades when our lives grew busier and more isolated, we’ve gone from having three confidants on average to only two, and the number of people saying they have no one to discuss important matters with has nearly tripled. Between 1974 and 1994, the percentage of Americans who said they visited with their neighbors at least once a month fell from almost two-thirds to less than half, a number that has continued to fall in the past decade. We simply worked too many hours earning, we commuted too far to our too-isolated homes, and there was always the blue glow of the tube shining through the curtains.

7. New friend or new coffeemaker? Pick one

because traditional economists think of human beings primarily as individuals and not as members of a community, they miss out on a major part of the satisfaction index. Economists lay it out almost as a mathematical equation: Overall, “evidence shows that companionship…contributes more to well-being than does income,” writes Robert E. Lane, a Yale political science professor who is the author of The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies. But there is a notable difference between poor and wealthy countries: When people have lots of companionship but not much money, income “makes more of a contribution to subjective well-being.” By contrast, “where money is relatively plentiful and companionship relatively scarce, companionship will add more to subjective well-being.” If you are a poor person in China, you have plenty of friends and family around all the time—perhaps there are four other people living in your room. Adding a sixth doesn’t make you happier. But adding enough money so that all five of you can eat some meat from time to time pleases you greatly. By contrast, if you live in a suburban American home, buying another coffeemaker adds very little to your quantity of happiness—trying to figure out where to store it, or wondering if you picked the perfect model, may in fact decrease your total pleasure. But a new friend, a new connection, is a big deal. We have a surplus of individualism and a deficit of companionship, and so the second becomes more valuable.

Indeed, we seem to be genetically wired for community. As biologist Edward O. Wilson found, most primates live in groups and get sad when they’re separated—”an isolated individual will repeatedly pull a lever with no reward other than the glimpse of another monkey.” Why do people so often look back on their college days as the best years of their lives? Because their classes were so fascinating? Or because in college, we live more closely and intensely with a community than most of us ever do before or after? Every measure of psychological health points to the same conclusion: People who “are married, who have good friends, and who are close to their families are happier than those who do not,” says Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz. “People who participate in religious communities are happier than those who are not.” Which is striking, Schwartz adds, because social ties “actually decrease freedom of choice”—being a good friend involves sacrifice.

Do we just think we’re happier in communities? Is it merely some sentimental good-night-John-Boy affectation? No—our bodies react in measurable ways. According to research cited by Harvard professor Robert Putnam in his classic book Bowling Alone, if you do not belong to any group at present, joining a club or a society of some kind cuts in half the risk that you will die in the next year. Check this out: When researchers at Carnegie Mellon (somewhat disgustingly) dropped samples of cold virus directly into subjects’ nostrils, those with rich social networks were four times less likely to get sick. An economy that produces only individualism undermines us in the most basic ways.

Here’s another statistic worth keeping in mind: Consumers have 10 times as many conversations at farmers’ markets as they do at supermarkets—an order of magnitude difference. By itself, that’s hardly life-changing, but it points at something that could be: living in an economy where you are participant as well as consumer, where you have a sense of who’s in your universe and how it fits together. At the same time, some studies show local agriculture using less energy (also by an order of magnitude) than the “it’s always summer somewhere” system we operate on now. Those are big numbers, and it’s worth thinking about what they suggest—especially since, between peak oil and climate change, there’s no longer really a question that we’ll have to wean ourselves of the current model.

So as a mental experiment, imagine how we might shift to a more sustainable kind of economy. You could use government policy to nudge the change—remove subsidies from agribusiness and use them instead to promote farmer-entrepreneurs; underwrite the cost of windmills with even a fraction of the money that’s now going to protect oil flows. You could put tariffs on goods that travel long distances, shift highway spending to projects that make it easier to live near where you work (and, by cutting down on commutes, leave some time to see the kids). And, of course, you can exploit the Net to connect a lot of this highly localized stuff into something larger. By way of example, a few of us are coordinating the first nationwide global warming demonstration­—but instead of marching on Washington, we’re rallying in our local areas, and then fusing our efforts, via the website stepitup07.org, into a national message.

It’s easy to dismiss such ideas as sentimental or nostalgic. In fact, economies can be localized as easily in cities and suburbs as rural villages (maybe more easily), and in ways that look as much to the future as the past, that rely more on the solar panel and the Internet than the white picket fence. In fact, given the trendlines for phenomena such as global warming and oil supply, what’s nostalgic and sentimental is to keep doing what we’re doing simply because it’s familiar.

8. The oil-for-people paradox: Why small farms produce more food

to understand the importance of this last point, consider the book American Mania by the neuroscientist Peter Whybrow. Whybrow argues that many of us in this country are predisposed to a kind of dynamic individualism—our gene pool includes an inordinate number of people who risked everything to start over. This served us well in settling a continent and building our prosperity. But it never got completely out of control, says Whybrow, because “the marketplace has always had its natural constraints. For the first two centuries of the nation’s existence, even the most insatiable American citizen was significantly leashed by the checks and balances inherent in a closely knit community, by geography, by the elements of weather, or, in some cases, by religious practice.” You lived in a society—a habitat—that kept your impulses in some kind of check. But that changed in the past few decades as the economy nationalized and then globalized. As we met fewer actual neighbors in the course of a day, those checks and balances fell away. “Operating in a world of instant communication with minimal social tethers,” Whybrow observes, “America’s engines of commerce and desire became turbocharged.”

Adam Smith himself had worried that too much envy and avarice would destroy “the empathic feeling and neighborly concerns that are essential to his economic model,” says Whybrow, but he “took comfort in the fellowship and social constraint that he considered inherent in the tightly knit communities characteristic of the 18th century.” Businesses were built on local capital investment, and “to be solicitous of one’s neighbor was prudent insurance against future personal need.” For the most part, people felt a little constrained about showing off wealth; indeed, until fairly recently in American history, someone who was making tons of money was often viewed with mixed emotions, at least if he wasn’t giving back to the community. “For the rich,” Whybrow notes, “the reward system would be balanced between the pleasure of self-gain and the civic pride of serving others. By these mechanisms the most powerful citizens would be limited in their greed.”

Once economies grow past a certain point, however, “the behavioral contingencies essential to promoting social stability in a market-regulated society—close personal relationships, tightly knit communities, local capital investment, and so on—are quickly eroded.” So re-localizing economies offers one possible way around the gross inequalities that have come to mark our societies. Instead of aiming for growth at all costs and hoping it will trickle down, we may be better off living in enough contact with each other for the affluent to once again feel some sense of responsibility for their neighbors. This doesn’t mean relying on noblesse oblige; it means taking seriously the idea that people, and their politics, can be changed by their experiences. It’s a hopeful sign that more and more local and state governments across the country have enacted “living wage” laws. It’s harder to pretend that the people you see around you every day should live and die by the dictates of the market.

Right around this time, an obvious question is doubtless occurring to you. Is it foolish to propose that a modern global economy of 6 (soon to be 9) billion people should rely on more localized economies? To put it more bluntly, since for most people “the economy” is just a fancy way of saying “What’s for dinner?” and “Am I having any?,” doesn’t our survival depend on economies that function on a massive scale—such as highly industrialized agriculture? Turns out the answer is no—and the reasons why offer a template for rethinking the rest of the economy as well.

We assume, because it makes a certain kind of intuitive sense, that industrialized farming is the most productive farming. A vast Midwestern field filled with high-tech equipment ought to produce more food than someone with a hoe in a small garden. Yet the opposite is true. If you are after getting the greatest yield from the land, then smaller farms in fact produce more food.

If you are one guy on a tractor responsible for thousands of acres, you grow your corn and that’s all you can do—make pass after pass with the gargantuan machine across a sea of crop. But if you’re working 10 acres, then you have time to really know the land, and to make it work harder. You can intercrop all kinds of plants—their roots will go to different depths, or they’ll thrive in each other’s shade, or they’ll make use of different nutrients in the soil. You can also walk your fields, over and over, noticing. According to the government’s most recent agricultural census, smaller farms produce far more food per acre, whether you measure in tons, calories, or dollars. In the process, they use land, water, and oil much more efficiently; if they have animals, the manure is a gift, not a threat to public health. To feed the world, we may actually need lots more small farms.

But if this is true, then why do we have large farms? Why the relentless consolidation? There are many reasons, including the way farm subsidies have been structured, the easier access to bank loans (and politicians) for the big guys, and the convenience for food-processing companies of dealing with a few big suppliers. But the basic reason is this: We substituted oil for people. Tractors and synthetic fertilizer instead of farmers and animals. Could we take away the fossil fuel, put people back on the land in larger numbers, and have enough to eat?

The best data to answer that question comes from an English agronomist named Jules Pretty, who has studied nearly 300 sustainable agriculture projects in 57 countries around the world. They might not pass the U.S. standards for organic certification, but they’re all what he calls “low-input.” Pretty found that over the past decade, almost 12 million farmers had begun using sustainable practices on about 90 million acres. Even more remarkably, sustainable agriculture increased food production by 79 percent per acre. These were not tiny isolated demonstration farms—Pretty studied 14 projects where 146,000 farmers across a broad swath of the developing world were raising potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cassava, and he found that practices such as cover-cropping and fighting pests with natural adversaries had increased production 150 percent—17 tons per household. With 4.5 million small Asian grain farmers, average yields rose 73 percent. When Indonesian rice farmers got rid of pesticides, their yields stayed the same but their costs fell sharply.

“I acknowledge,” says Pretty, “that all this may sound too good to be true for those who would disbelieve these advances. Many still believe that food production and nature must be separated, that ‘agroecological’ approaches offer only marginal opportunities to increase food production, and that industrialized approaches represent the best, and perhaps only, way forward. However, prevailing views have changed substantially in just the last decade.”

And they will change just as profoundly in the decades to come across a wide range of other commodities. Already I’ve seen dozens of people and communities working on regional-scale sustainable timber projects, on building energy networks that work like the Internet by connecting solar rooftops and backyard windmills in robust mini-grids. That such things can begin to emerge even in the face of the political power of our reigning economic model is remarkable; as we confront significant change in the climate, they could speed along the same kind of learning curve as Pretty’s rice farmers and wheat growers. And they would not only use less energy; they’d create more community. They’d start to reverse the very trends I’ve been describing, and in so doing rebuild the kind of scale at which Adam Smith’s economics would help instead of hurt.

In the 20th century, two completely different models of how to run an economy battled for supremacy. Ours won, and not only because it produced more goods than socialized state economies. It also produced far more freedom, far less horror. But now that victory is starting to look Pyrrhic; in our overheated and underhappy state, we need some new ideas.

We’ve gone too far down the road we’re traveling. The time has come to search the map, to strike off in new directions. Inertia is a powerful force; marriages and corporations and nations continue in motion until something big diverts them. But in our new world we have much to fear, and also much to desire, and together they can set us on a new, more promising course.

- from motherjones. Mar/Apr 2007

Lies, Damn Lies, and Science

According to a recent article in Eos (Doran and Zimmermann, ‘Examining the Scientific consensus on Climate Change‘, Volume 90, Number 3, 2009; p. 22-23 – only available for AGU members – update: a public link to the article is here), about 58% of the general public in the US thinks that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing the mean global temperature, as opposed to 97% of specialists surveyed.

The disproportion between these numbers is a concern, and one possible explanation may be that the science literacy among the general public is low. Perhaps Sherry Seethaler’s new book ‘Lies, Damn Lies, and Science’ can be a useful contribution in raising the science literacy?

The book is about science in general and about how science often is miscommunicated in the media. It addresses a range of issues, such as how statistics often is misused, how scientific progress is made in general, that the ’scientific method’ is not always as straightforward as one might like to think, the influence of stake-holders, the importance of knowing the context of the research, relationships between science and policy, and ploys designed to bypass logic. Many of the points made in the book are probably well known for the RC readership – albeit used in different situations to the case studies discussed in the book. There is also some discussion about AGW, amongst other subjects.

The description of the greenhouse effect is not quite correct, as the reader gets the impression that it involves reflecting infrared radiation back to space (p. 84). That is not the case, as the energy from the sun lies mainly in the visible spectrum, and the infra red light from the Earth is a product from the absorption of the sunlight and a re-emittance due to Planck’s law.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Science’ has much in common with the older book ‘Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics’, and that they try to convey similar take-home messages.

- from realclimate

Keeping an eye on Wilkins Ice Shelf

As the Wilkins Ice Shelf is at risk of breaking away from the Antarctic Peninsula, ESA’s Envisat satellite is observing the area on a daily basis. The satellite acquisitions of the ice shelf are updated automatically on this website to monitor the developments immediately as they occur.

In late November 2008, new rifts developed on Wilkins Ice Shelf. As scientists predicted, this led to the collapse of the ice bridge that had connected the ice shelf to Charcot Island in early April 2009.

The collapse of the ice bridge, which was approximately 100 km long and only a few km wide, had formed a barrier pinning back the northern ice front of the central Wilkins Ice Shelf. As a consequence of the collapse, the rifts on the shelf widened and new cracks formed as the ice adjusted in the days that followed.

Towards the end of April 2009, icebergs had started to calve from the northern front of the ice shelf, indicating that it had destabilised.

The above animation is comprised of images acquired by Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) and is updated daily as new ASAR acquisitions become available. The individual images that make up the animation are also available in the image archive on the right navigation bar.

- from esa

Disappearing from map

An ice bridge which had apparently held a vast Antarctic ice shelf in place during recorded history shattered on Saturday and could herald a wider collapse linked to global warming, a leading scientist said.

The satellite picture, from the European Space Agency (ESA), showed that a 40 km (25 mile) long strip of ice believed to pin the Wilkins Ice Shelf in place had splintered at its narrowest point, about 500 meters wide.

The Wilkins, now the size of Jamaica or the U.S. state of Connecticut, is one of 10 shelves to have shrunk or collapsed in recent years on the Antarctic Peninsula, where temperatures have risen in recent decades apparently because of global warming.

The ESA picture showed a jumble of huge flat-topped icebergs in the sea where the ice bridge had been on Friday, pinning the Wilkins to the coast and running northwest to Charcot Island.

The loss of the ice bridge, jutting about 20 meters out of the water and which was almost 100 km wide in 1950, may now allow ocean currents to wash away far more of the Wilkins shelf.

Nine other shelves have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic Peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002 further north.

Cores of sediments on the seabed indicate that some of these ice shelves had been in place for at least 10,000 years.

In January, the remaining ice bridge had been surrounded by icebergs the size of shopping malls, many of them trapped in sea ice. A few seals were visible lolling on sea ice in the low Antarctic sunshine.

Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have risen by up to about 3 Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit) in the past 50 years, the fastest rate of warming in the Southern Hemisphere.

The loss of ice shelves does not affect sea levels — floating ice contracts as it melts and so does not raise ocean levels. But their loss can allow glaciers on land to slide more rapidly toward the sea, adding water to the oceans.

The Wilkins does not have much ice pent up behind it. But bigger ice shelves to the south on the frozen continent, where no major warming has been detected, hold back far more ice.

- from reuters. 6 Apr 2009

What is science?

Science is both a body of knowledge and a process.
Science is a collection of isolated and static facts and also a process of discovery that allows us to link isolated facts into coherent and comprehensive understandings of the natural world.

Science is exciting.
Scientists are motivated by the thrill of seeing or figuring out something that no one has before.

Science is useful.
The knowledge generated by science is powerful and reliable. It can be used to develop new technologies, treat diseases, and deal with many other sorts of problems.

Science is ongoing.
Science is continually refining and expanding our knowledge.

Science is a global human endeavour.
People all over the world participate in the process of science.

- from berkeley

Page 1

Cleaning oil spills also harmful

A new Queen’s University study shows that detergents used to clean up spills of diesel oil actually increase its toxicity to fish, making it more harmful. The detergents are oil dispersants that decrease the surface tension between oil and water, allowing floating oil to mix with water as tiny droplets. Dr. Peter Hodson and his team found that dispersion reduces the potential impacts of oil on surface-dwelling animals, While this should enhance biodegradation, it also creates a larger reservoir of oil in the water column.

This increases the transfer of hydrocarbons from oil to water, Dr. Hodson explains. The hydrocarbons pass easily from water into tissues and are deadly to fish in the early stages of life. “This could seriously impair the health of fish populations, resulting in long-term reductions in economic returns to fisheries,” he says.

The study is published in the journal, Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

The researchers also determined that even though chemical dispersants are not typically used in freshwater, turbulent rivers can disperse spilled diesel and create similar negative effects.

- from queensu. 16 Mar 2009

Feminization of fish

Around the world, increasing numbers of male fish are developing female traits — growing new sexual organs and sometimes even producing eggs. The phenomenon has been blamed mostly on chemicals that get into the water and mimic the female hormone estrogen.

But a new study puts some of the blame on an entirely different class of chemicals — ones that block the action of male hormones called androgens.

It isn’t the first study to suggest that anti-androgens might be contributing to the feminization of fish. But the new research found that there are far more of these chemicals in our lakes and streams than anyone realized. And anti-androgenic chemicals in the water might affect human health as well.

Charles Tyler, along with Susan Jobling at Brunel University in London and other colleagues, looked at chemical run-off in 51 rivers throughout the United Kingdom. By combining concentrated water samples with cultures of yeast genetically engineered to have androgen receptors, the scientists were able to measure the amount of anti-androgen activity in each sample.

The researchers’ results, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, revealed a significant amount of anti-androgenic activity in nearly all of the samples tested.

The researchers also collected fish from each site. With statistical models, they were able to show that anti-androgens were just as responsible for the feminization of fish as estrogenic compounds were — if not more so.

Anti-androgenic chemicals usually come originally from pesticides or pharmaceuticals that get into wastewater. Dozens of studies have linked these chemicals with health problems in mammals, said Gerald Ankley, an ecotoxicologist with the Environmental Protection Agency in Duluth, Minn. But this is one of the first studies to make the link in fish.

scientists will need to figure out exactly which anti-androgenic chemicals are causing problems in fish. (For his part, Tyler says he is on the verge of announcing three new anti-androgenic chemicals that will add to the list of more commonly known compounds).

Researchers also want to test whether certain mixtures of hormone-disrupting compounds are more harmful than any one chemical alone, Ankley added. And the work brings up plenty of questions about what chemicals in our rivers and streams might be doing to human health. After all, people and fish have similar hormonal systems.

“If it happens in fish, it can happen in humans.”, Tyler said.

- from discovery. 4 Mar 2009

Distance travelled for work

According to the 2001 Nationwide Household Travel Survey (NHTS), 58% of all vehicle trips to work are less than 11 miles (17.7 kilometers).

Vehicle trips to work that are 5 miles (8 kilometers) and less represent 37%, according to the same survey.

Trips between 6 and 10 miles (9.6 to 16 kilometers) represent 21%.

Only 10% of vehicle trips to work are equal or more than 31 miles (50 kilometers). This is very promising since EVs that are coming to market over the next few years. usually have an all-electric driving range of around 40-50 miles (65-80 kilometers).

- from treehugger. 5 Mar 2009

Sea Sick

All life — whether on land or in the sea — depends on the oceans for two things:

• Oxygen. Most of Earth’s oxygen is produced by phytoplankton in the sea. These humble, one-celled organisms, rather than the spectacular rain forests, are the true lungs of the planet.

• Climate control. Our climate is regulated by the ocean’s currents, winds, and water-cycle activity.

Sea Sick is the first book to examine the current state of the world’s oceans — the great unexamined ecological crisis of the planet — and the fact that we are altering everything about them; temperature, salinity, acidity, ice cover, volume, circulation, and, of course, the life within them.

Alanna Mitchell joins the crews of leading scientists in nine of the global ocean’s hotspots to see firsthand what is really happening around the world. Whether it’s the impact of coral reef bleaching, the puzzle of the oxygen-less dead zones such as the one in the Gulf of Mexico, or the shocking implications of the changing Ph balance of the sea, Mitchell explains the science behind the story to create an engaging, accessible yet authoritative account.

- from mcclelland

New Economic Team of US

On Monday Obama named New York Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner to the post of the Treasury Secretary. Former Treasury Secretary under Clinton Lawrence Summers was named the Director of the National Economic Council in the White House.

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Obama said again and again during the campaign that the crisis on Wall Street represented the culmination of an ideology of deregulation and laisse-faire trickle-down economics that had guided the country for the past eight years. The truth is, it was not just eight years, they guided them under Reagan and also under Clinton.

That is where Larry Summers comes in because he was the last treasury secretary under Clinton. He along with Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin were the key architects of the policies of deregulation that created the crisis that we’re living now. And those key policies are the killing of Glass-Spiegel that allowed a series of very large but mergers that created these institutions that are too big and too intermingled to fail we’re told again and again.
The deliberate decision to keep the derivatives out of the reach of financial regulators- that was also a Summer’s decision. And also allowing the banks to carry these extraordinary levels of debt. 33 to 1 in the case of Bear Sterns.

Larry Summers in the context in which he says it was 1992 and it was when he was making World Bank economic policy as it related to Russia, in the midst of a financial crisis. What he said is truly an ideologue and a follower of the very ideology- not just a follower but a propagator of the very ideology that Obama ran his campaign against. And here’s the qoute. This is Larry Summers in 1992: “Spread the truth. The laws of economics are like the laws of engineering. One set of laws works everywhere.” And then he laid out those laws a little bit later.

He referred to the three “ations”, and those were privatization, stabilization, and liberalization. So he has been preaching the doctrine. He is by no means an innocent bystander. He is a dyed-in-the-wool privatizer, free trader. And he along with Tim Geithner, his deputy play key roles during the very important economic crises in other countries like Russia, Mexico etc, When these countries suffered profound econimic crisis created by the deregulations they preach more deregulations more privatization and economic austerity to disastrous results.
- Naomi Klein

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He is not quite as pessimistic as Naomi Klein is because first of all, Obama is the president, and not Summers.
we have reality on our side in the sense there is a very serious crisis. And if Obama follows the advice of the 1990’s version of Larry Summers, he will be politically toast.
- Robert Kuttner

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“On Monday, Geithner was busy executing the government’s massive rescue of Citicorp–the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton’s economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers’ money. Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.”
- William Greider in The Nation

“Ultimately, Summers was one of the key architects of our financial crisis. Hiring him to fix the economy makes as much sense as appointing Paul Wolfowitz to oversee the Iraq withdrawal.”
- Mark Ames in The Nation

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And the question is, whether Geithner and Summers in very different historical moments can turn into different kinds of people under the leadership of a president who knows his own survival depends on pursuing a recovery.

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what Larry Summers did in Russia, under privatization that will be ruling Russia for the next hundred years. The key was to use public expenditure that would increase private wealth. What the plan is, from everything Obama has said, is that there is going to be a heavy government expenditure infrastructure here, very much like it was in Chicago, and this infrastructure is going to create huge real estate fortunes for the property along the line that in the vicinity of the location of the infrastructure. It’s going to create huge financial fortune.

Mass-transit and almost every country creates an increase in real estate values along the routes that could actually rental that is increased by this could actually finance the entire transport system. In London when they built the tube extension to their financial district of the loop, they created 13 billion pounds worth of increased in real estate value. The tube itself cost only $8 billion. They left this $13 billion real estate value in the hands of the private landlords. Same thing in Chicago in the US. It can be a very heavy investment in mass transportation here. This is going to create enormous real-estate values. The tax system, leaves these in private hands. All of the tax proposals that Mr. Obama have spoken about, have to do with income tax primarily. The rich people prefer not to earn income. They prefer to make capital gains. So the intention of the economic gain that Mr. Obama brought in is really to create a huge capital gains economy. Even more disparity of wealth while leaving in place the one thing that should address in the last year and that is the enormous debt overhead. Nothing is happening on that. He is adding to debt, not reducing it.

The kicker is when he is talking about, Obama is talking about tax, he is talking about income tax. Most wealth, is not taxed, because most wealth, takes the form of return capital gain, most wealth does not pay, if I see a wage if not others, so what Obama is talking about, well, is taxation at the margin. He is not talking about kind of wealth, and the kind of returns that Wall Street gets, which are not subject to taxation at all, in fact, the give aways, that the treasury put in to the bank available, says that because the banks are bought, affiliates that have cash, they are not even going to be subject of the income taxation. So the whole issue of the devils of detail of the small print and Mr. Obama, thanks to his appointing Summers in this aim, is going to leave it there. The Russian cryptnocrats didn’t have to tax on income, as the phrase went, only the little people pay taxes, I am afraid that’s going to be the case under Mr. Obama also.
- Robert Kuttner

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Nancy Pelosi and that others are saying when you bring us the plan, maybe we’ll talk about giving you money. Do the banks have any plans with the money they’re getting?

No, and of course that’s what we should be doing. I think rather than throwing money at them we ought to probably nationalize one or two banks. That with the money taxpayers are putting into the bank’s does what money usually does in capitastic society, it produces ownerships. The amount of money taxpayers are putting into banks at this point is more than the total value of the stocks of these banks as valued by Wall Street.

Well if you’re putting in a majority share of the money, you should get a majority share of the ownership. If banks are too traumatized to resume lending, even with public money then if we had a publicly owned bank or two, we could show them how to do it. We could also have a complete look at their books, which we don’t now have. One question being asked about Tim Geithner is that if the Federal Reserve is the agency charged with examining bank holding companies and it was the strategy of Citigroup as a bank holding company, as shown in Sunday’s Time investigative piece, the strategy of the holding company was to do all of these exotic speculative investments.

Where was Tim Geithner at the Federal Reserve of New York which has the examiners that are supposed to be examining the bank at the holding company level. Why didn’t they get a look at the book? If we do not have tools to allow examiners to get inside to dig deep inside the plumbing and understand what dangerous risks bank speculators are taking, we need to do two things. We need to change the laws so the agency’s can have adequate supervisory power. The agencies need to use that adequate supervisory power. and in the meantime, we need to take this money and just nationalize a couple of banks outright. I completely agree with you that there is a double standard vis-a-vi the banks and vis-a-vi Detroit.

It is a little bit easier a few of the political will to just take over a bank that it is to take over an auto company. Because the question remains, even if we were to require the auto executives to come up with a plan for conversion to fuel efficient cars and fire the auto executives and get people who were competent and get public representatives on the company boards, you still love to come up with products consumers want to buy. And that has so far eluded Detroit. It has not eluded the Japanese competitors of Detroit. But, oddly enough, the recipe of how you fix a bank is somewhat easier than the recipe of how you fix an auto company. Stay away from these exotic financial instruments, get rid of conflicts of interest, have transparency. And we had the political will, it would not be that difficult to get the banking sector back on track. Detroit if anything is even harder. Pelosi is right to say that we don’t want to throw money at Detroit’s until we see the plan, but we ought be doing at least as much for the banking sector.
- Robert Kuttner

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We are already seeing hesitation about the commitment to not renew the Bush tax cuts. Then there’s a huge fight over capital gains tax and the kinds of taxes paid by hedge funds.

Larry Summers is coming straight from a hedge fund. He’s managing director of one of the most secretive hedge funds (D.E. Shaw) around . So the real question is not whether they will spend taxpayer money, they will on infrastructure, but the point is will they just just rack up huge debt and deficits or will they actually pay for this with taxes on the wealthy, which is what they promised to do and what we’re seeing Gordon Brown begin to do in Britain. Because if they do not pay for this an equitable way, in a progressive way, then what will happen is this huge investment in infrastructure will create huge economic crisis down the road. It will be blamed on Obama. And then, there will be a wave of privatizations, these new investments in public spending. There will be a whole new bubble.
- Naomi Klein

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Most infrastructure is built by states and localities. I do not think there will be privatization of this new infrastructure because right now, the states and localities are broke. here in New York city that have announced they’re cutting back on the Second Avenue subway, raising transport fares. All over the United States, municipalities are broke. The idea of bringing in Summers is to do this from the very beginning, with private funds that will be provided largely by the government itself. And if you look of the bailout money that has been given, yesterday Bloomberg calculated over 7.7 trillion dollars of just the government taking over from the financial sector this year. Of all of the 7.7 trillion dollars, what has not been done? One thing that has not been bailed out has been the pension benefit guaranty corporation They are already $25 billion in deficit. And Congress a few years ago passed a law that this year if they’re not fully funded, they are going to have to suddenly make up the entire shortfall. Which is essentially going to make many corporations insolvent for their pension funds. Forcing a shift away from guaranteed pensions to sort of whatever we have we’ll pay you. Standardize contributions, but not standardized payoffs. So there’s going to be an enormous squeeze on the kind of labor’s that is employed in states and municipalities, unions for infrastructure to essentially privatize from the beginning with government guarantees, government funds and it will be a bonanza for the banks and that’s out there they are going to earn their way out of debt. By lending to private funds instead of government funds.
- Michael Hudson

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In 1996 General Motors introduced the EV-1 electric car in California and Arizona. Hundreds of the electric cars were soon on the road, then they all disappeared. The mystery behind their disappearance is the subject of this documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?”

In this clip,
PETER HORTON: There’s nothing like driving a car when you realize as you are sitting in traffic there’s no pollution coming out of your tailpipe.

DAVID LETTERMAN: By driving an electric car, what are you sparing us from?

TOM HANKS: I’m saving America, Dave. That’s what I am doing, I am saving America by driving electric cars.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Tom Hanks speaking on the David Letterman Show. Despite the praise from drivers, General Motors stopped manufacturing the cars and forced all drivers to return their EV-1’s. GM was able to do this because none of the cars had actually been sold, only leased. After the electric cars were removed from the road they were sent to Arizona where they were crushed.

CHRIS PAINE: We flew over at General Motors and looking down, we could see right next to the racetrack where the EV-1 was first tested, we saw maybe 50 EV-1’s, crushed and put on top of semi flatbeds right next to the yellow crusher. General motors is almost finished off I think. I don’t imagine there’s many EV-1’s left that haven’t been crushed out. It’s pretty sad.

DAVE BARTHMUSS: There’s one of four things that will happen with the EV-1s. They will go to colleges and universities, engineering schools. They’ll go to museums and other displays across the country. Other EV-1 vehicles are being driven by our engineers and the other option for EV-1’s at the end of their life is recycling. But know that every part of the EV-1 is going to be recycled, dismantled through a third party and then reused. Everything is going to be recycled, we are not just going to crush it and send it off to a landfill.

JIM BOYD: When I saw the picture of the pile of crushed cars, it hurt and I, you know, I thought it was pretty spiteful.

IRIS OVSHINSKY: To see on the computer, on the internet, that the crushed EV-1s that GM did—it was tragic.
- Who Killed the Electric Car

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That film is one of the most profound documentary’s of our time. GM was actually ahead of Toyota, and now working our way back towards a plug an electric car via modified hybrid, but they had the technology 12,14 years ago, you can’t make this stuff up. The patent for the battery that made possible the EV1 was bought by Exxonmobil just so it would never be utilized again. I think that is why in restructuring the auto industry, you have to get rid of the executives.

Its not just enough throw money at them. It gives you a sense of how profound the challenge is—just analogizing Bob Rubin for a second, in a country where market capitalism has as much power as it does in the U.S., whether the villain of the piece is GM or Robert Rubin and Citigroup, it is bigger than any one person, its a system you have to fight. It’s the mark of their power—residual power of the system. Even when the system as come to a crisis of its own making, and your president as attractive and intelligent as Barack Obama, the institutional practice to reappoint the same standards are overwhelming. It is only when Obama looks over the cliff of the failure of his own administration because he has not thought boldly enough, that he may change his plans and move in a more radical direction.

So far the direction whether its taxing rich people, he has moved and is disappointing. The same thing was true of the Roosevelt administration in the beginning. All you can do is hope the pressure from folks like us, ordinary people and social movements, and from the dire circumstances we face ,will push the ministration in a more progressive direction.
- Robert Kuttner

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The point that Robert Kuttner made, the bottom line for that is the fatal alliance between the American auto industry and the oil industry. It was the auto industry that bought up public transportation in Los Angeles and other cities after the World War II, and tore it down some people would not have public transportation and would have to have oils to drive cars.
- Michael Hudson

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when anybody comes looking for a long, whoever has the money has the leverage. We know that from the International Monetary Fund and you know that from your local bank. They set the conditions for that loan. When you look at deals that have been negotiated, not just by Henry Paulson, but also by Tim Geithner, you know hes the one that negotiated, really the key person on the JP Morgan-Bear Sterns deal. He was also central in the AIG deal. And what we see again and again, taxpayers have taken on enormous risks from these companies. But they have not been exerting control in terms of reregulating the sector as a whole. Because the sector as whole lining up for these equity deals, emergency loan.

When exactly is the Re-regulation going to happen? is there any conditions attached to these loans. This is the moment of high leverage. It is not just about firing the boss and seats on the board, it is about we re-regulating exactly what Larry Summers and Tim Geithner de-regulated under the Clinton administration. The real question is do these people have the humility to fix their own mistakes? My question is his Larry Summers’ ego too big to fail? These guys should not be promoted at this point. Their reputations should really be destroyed by their own track records.
All these people are constantly talking about how brilliant the art despite the dismal track record in this country and other countries in which they have meddled including South Korea and Russia.

The key issue here is Obama is coming to these decisions because he is under enormous pressure from above, Wall Street, how do you transition from a pro Obama campaign movement to an independent social movement that puts will counter-pressure on him from below? Those are the conditions under which Roosevelt sold the new deal as a compromise to elite. We do not have those dynamics right now. We have a situation where we have super-fans for Obama, constantly apologizing for every decision that he makes versus a gloves-off elite who are putting real pressure on him behind the scenes. And we are seeing the result.
- Naomi Klein

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Discussion: Naomi Klein, Robert Kuttner, Michael Hudson

Naomi Klein, Investigative journalist and author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”

Robert Kuttner, Veteran economic journalist and the cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect magazine. His latest book is called “Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency.”

Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of “Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.” He is the chief economic adviser to Rep. Dennis Kucinich.

- from democracynow. 25 Nov 2008

Private Cars in China up 28% in 2008

The total number of cars for civilian use in China rose 24.5% in 2008 from 2007 to 24.38 million, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Private-owned cars numbered 19.47 million, representing a 28.0% increase over 2007.

The total number of motor vehicles for civilian use reached 64.67 million (including 14.92 million tri-wheel motor vehicles and low-speed trucks) by the end of 2008, up 13.5%, of which private-owned vehicles numbered 41.73 million, up 18.1%.

Passenger traffic on all modes of transportation climbed 8.2% year-on-year to 23,372.2 million person-kilometers. Of that, highway passenger traffic increased 9.8% to 12,636.0 million person-kilometers, representing 54% of all passenger traffic. Rail passenger traffic increased 7.8% to 7,778.6 million person-kilometers, civil aviation passenger traffic increased 3.3% to 2,882.8 million person-kilometers, and waterway traffic dropped 3.8% to 74.8 million person-kilometers.

China’s GDP grew 9.0% year-on-year in 2008 to 30.067 trillion yuan (US$4.4 trillion), up by 9.0 percent over the previous year. That growth rate represented a sharp drop from the 2006 to 2007 growth of 13.0%.

- from greencarcongress. 27 Feb 2009

People of China please dont mimic west.
Please try to reduce your travel.

Replacing radioactive strontium batteries

the Governor of Murmansk Oblast Yury Yevdokimov and his Norwegian counterpart Finnmark County Governor Gunnar Kjønnøy met in Kirkenes to discuss further cooperation within nuclear safety projects. The successful project of removing radioactive strontium batteries from lighthouses will now be adopted in the Baltic Sea.
Norway will grant 62 million NOK to nuclear safety projects in Russia in 2009.

So far Norway has granted 130 million NOK to infrastructure improvements at the nuclear waste storage facility in Andreeva Bay on the Kola Peninsula. This year focus will be on building of a training center and a canteen for 100 workers and also improvements in the electricity supply to the bay from the naval town Zaozersk. The Norwegian side plans to spend another 8-10 million NOK on this project in 2009-2010.

Yevdokimov believes that removal of the nuclear waste form the storage facility can begin in 2010. The harbor facilities have been upgraded, and a an Italian project partner is engaged in building of a special boat that can transport containers with waste from the bay to the railroad for further transportation to the Mayak plant outside Chelyabinsk. He underlines the degree of difficulty connected with the work, and says that it will take years to clear the storage facility.

Since 2001 169 radioactive strontium batteries (RTGs) have been removed from light houses along the coast of the Kola Peninsula and in the White Sea area. The radioactive sources have been replaced with solar cell technology. Only 11 RTGs remain. These are located in difficult accessible places and will be removed in course of 2009. The last RTGs will be removed from Vaygach Island in August under a ceremony where representatives from both the Russian and Norwegian governments are expected to participate.

Based on the successful cooperation in the Norwegian-Russian project on replacing radioactive strontium batteries with solar panels in lighthouses along the White Sea and Barents Sea coast, the two governors have been asked to be project leaders in a similar program in the Baltic Sea.

RTGs will be removed from 79 lighthouses in the Gulf of Finland and eight on the coast of Kaliningrad.

An agreement on the project is expected to be signed in March by Yevdokimov, Kjønnøy and Commander of the Russian Baltic Fleet, who owns and operates the Baltic Sea lighthouses. The first 22 RTGs are planned to be removed this year.

- from barentsobserver. 25 Feb 2009

Areva’s profit is slashing

The construction of the OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland has been such a disaster, it is now directly impacting on the builder’s profits. French nuclear clowns Areva have today announced that their profits have been slashed by 20 per cent on last year, from 743 million euros to 589 million.

This single reactor – initially projected to cost three billion Euros – has now accumulated 1.7 billion euros in losses for the company who want to sell EPR reactors to the rest of the world. And this figure excludes the 2.4 billion euros that OL3’s buyers – Finnish utility TVO – are claiming in damages from Areva for massive schedule and cost overruns, and general all-round incompetence.

If the claim goes against Areva, OL3 could end up costing the company more than it was paid to build it. How’s that for nuclear economics?

- from greenpeace. 26 Feb 2009

Eco-City Melbourne

A VISION for a suburb of the future with no cars, an 80 per cent reduction in carbon emissions and the ability to grow its own food has been unveiled by a State Government-funded thinktank. And it could happen on a site just two kilometres from the centre of Melbourne.

A 20-hectare site for the new green suburb has even been identified on land owned by VicTrack, the government body that owns the state’s rail assets. The lease on the site known as E-Gate, just off Footscray Road, expires in 2014 and Major Projects Victoria has been working with VicTrack on possibilities for the land.

Now, the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab, a university-based thinktank funded by the Government, has come up with ideas for a new environmentally friendly suburb at the site.

An exhibition of the proposals from 200 university students, known as Eco-City Melbourne

The lab’s director Professor Chris Ryan said a new sustainable suburb could be created at E-Gate, including a ban on cars.

“No cars on the site — the site is made for walking, cycling and we are going to provide on the site free, small, electric vehicles that can be picked up by any resident on the site and roamed around on the site,” he said.

He said it was only a 25-minute walk to the central business district and there would be cars available on the suburb’s fringe for residents to book. “If this was a standard development, you would have 4000-5000 cars.”

Professor Ryan said the medium-density suburb would have buildings of up to eight storeys and a centralised heating and cooling system.

He said the site would also treat all its own sewage and use some of the resultant methane for power production. There would also be urban wind towers and solar panels to produce electricity.

Another innovative feature would be the suburb’s ability to produce food, with mini urban-farms spread across the development and a “multi-storey farm”.

- from theage. 25 Feb 2009

What Is Science

Science is, in one sense, our knowledge of all the stuff that is in the universe: from the tiniest subatomic particles in a single atom of the metal in your computer’s circuits, to the nuclear reactions that formed the immense ball of gas that is our sun, to the complex chemical interactions and electrical fluctuations within your own body that allow you to read and understand these words. science is also a reliable process by which we learn about all that stuff in the universe.

Science relies on testing ideas with evidence gathered from the natural world.

Science helps satisfy the natural curiosity with which we are all born: why is the sky blue, how did the leopard get its spots, what is a solar eclipse? With science, we can answer such questions without resorting to magical explanations.

And science can lead to technological advances.

Science focuses exclusively on the natural world, and does not deal with supernatural explanations.

Science is a way of learning about what is in the natural world, how the natural world works, and how the natural world got to be the way it is. It is not simply a collection of facts; rather it is a path to understanding.

Scientists work in many different ways, but all science relies on testing ideas by figuring out what expectations are generated by an idea and making observations to find out whether those expectations hold true.

Accepted scientific ideas are reliable because they have been subjected to rigorous testing, but as new evidence is acquired and new perspectives emerge these ideas can be revised.

Science is a community endeavor. It relies on a system of checks and balances, which helps ensure that science moves in the direction of greater accuracy and understanding. This system is facilitated by diversity within the scientific community, which offers a broad range of perspectives on scientific ideas.

- from berkeley

Congo, a country with huge natural resources, but

Congo itself is located in the heart of Africa. It’s literally and figuratively the fulcrum on which Africa swings. It’s the size of western Europe, bordered by nine other African countries. So, when something happens in the Congo, it affects not only its neighbors, but the entire African continent. And it’s the geostrategic storehouse of minerals that are central or vital to the functioning of modern technology, as well as the US and Western aerospace and military industries. So it’s a critical country not only for the African continent, but for the world as a whole.

the latest development is a result of what’s been transpiring for the last twelve years or so. The central question that we see in the Congo is, who’s going to control Congo’s wealth, and for whose benefit? Wangari Maathai, the Nobel laureate, said that these wars, when you look at them, it’s about who’s going to control the resources. And this conflict in the Congo that we see today is a resource conflict.

And the latest expression of this resource conflict is Laurent Nkunda’s rebel group, that is trying to capture and control resource-rich areas in eastern Congo, that’s backed up by the Rwandan government, who has invaded the Congo twice, first in 1996 and again in 1998, with the full backing of the United States and other Western nations. And this is according to congressional testimony that was held in 2001 when Cynthia McKinney and Tom Tancredo had hearings on the situation in the Congo, where you had experts under oath documenting US involvement or backing of the invasions.

Nkunda is a former member of the Rwandan military. He had fought with Rwandan Patriotic forces when they replaced the so-called Hutu regime in 1994. He is also under an executive order from President Bush, who outlined that he should be called for or brought to justice for committing war crimes. And he’s heading up a group called the Congress—or the National Congress for the Defense of the People. So he and his group is made up of about 6,000 rebel forces, which is a key point, because these conflicts are often presented as Africans warring against each other, but what we have here is a small group—6,000 in a nation of nearly 60 million—that’s getting strong support by one of US’s staunchest allies in the region, Rwanda.

a number of weapons traders in the area. From 2001 to 2003, the United Nations documented the trades of arms in the Congo. It identified individuals such as George Forrest out of Belgium, also looked at eastern European nations that are involved in arms trades in the region.

Congo is endowed with spectacular natural resources that are vital to the functioning of modern society. We can take, for example, cobalt, of which Congo has a third of the world’s reserve of cobalt. Cobalt—the Congressional Budget Office says cobalt is a strategic mineral for the US’s aerospace and military industries. For those of us who are concerned about environmentally friendly cars, such as the hybrid, cobalt is a central mineral for the functioning of the batteries in those cars. You have about 2.5 kilograms of cobalt in a Toyota Prius, for example.

You have coltan, or columbite-tantalite. Congo has anywhere from 64 to 80 percent of the world’s reserve of this mineral, which is found in almost every cell phone. It’s found in the video games that our children play. It’s found in the airbags in our automobiles, and the air suspension brakes. It’s actually the wonder resource or wonder mineral of our time.

You have tin, which is vital to the functioning of our computers and laptops. So there are a number of strategic minerals that are found in the Congo that are key to the functioning of modern society and modern industries.

the different forces that came into the Congo—you have to understand, Congo was invaded in 1996, where Laurent Kabila, the father, was installed, and then invaded again in 1998, when Kabila fell out with his backers, Rwanda and Uganda. As a result of the second invasion in ’98, Kabila reached out to its SADC members, Southern African Development Community members, Angola and Zimbabwe, to come to the rescue and forestall Rwanda’s and Uganda’s effort to overthrow him.

Here we have again today, where we see Rwanda backing Nkunda, Nkunda vowing to go all the way to Kinshasa, and Angola has said, “Well, we’re not going to allow that to happen again. We’re going to step in.” So, now you see Angolans coming in. That’s why in today’s New York Times editorial, it warns about a regional war occurring as a result of Rwanda’s backing of Nkunda and Angola now saying that it’s going to come into the fray.

there are 17,000 peacekeepers, UN peacekeepers, in eastern Congo. They are being kept there or maintained there to the tune of a billion dollars a year. However, Congo is the size of western Europe. You have about one peacekeeper for every 10,000 people or so. So they have a daunting task to try and bring about peace and stability in the region. So they’ve had difficulty protecting the civilian population. So you have—Nkunda’s troops are really running circles around the UN troops. In addition to that, UN troops, their mandate is limited. They don’t have an offensive mandate. So that makes it even more difficult for them to rout the rebel forces of Laurent Nkunda.

the issue is not even so much the UN forces. What we see in the Congo is policies coming from the West that prioritize profit over the people. Kabila, himself, was installed in 2006, in elections that were held in the Congo, with the full backing of the Western powers, to the exclusion of the pro-democracy and grassroots forces inside the Congo. So you hear today experts in the media saying, “Well, Kabila should control the country, or he should do more with his own troops,” who have been also been accused of committing atrocities. But it’s not in the political DNA of the Kabila government to govern. The government actually reigns, but it does not govern. And when it was put in place by the Western nations, they knew very well what the outcome would be, because he was put in place in order to provide unfettered access for Congo’s vast mineral resources to Western corporations. And this has been documented by—in Foreign Policy magazine back in 2006 by Paule Bouvier and [Pierre] Englebert. They clearly stated that the US and Western nations were prioritizing stability over democracy. We argued at that time that the result—that the US or the Western nations would get neither stability nor democracy, because the policies were flawed in the first place.

Are they going to go from a—look at Africa from a perspective of charity and militarization, or are they going to look at Africa from a perspective of justice?

Put justice and the people as priorities and radically change and fundamentally change the way the United States and Western nations deal with the African continent.

Maurice Carney talking with Amy Goodman

Maurice Carney is with the organization Friends of the Congo.

- from democracynow. 13 Nov 2008

Polluting Maritime Shipping industry

Globally, commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate matter pollutants into the air as the total amount released by the world’s cars, according to a new study led by NOAA and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ship pollutants affect local air quality and the health of people living along coastlines. The findings appear online this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research.

The study is the first to provide a global estimate of maritime shipping’s total contribution to air particle pollution based on direct measurements of emissions. The authors estimate that globally, ships emit 0.9 teragrams, or about 2.2 million pounds, of particle pollution each year.

“Since more than 70 percent of shipping traffic takes place within 250 miles of the coastline, this is a significant health concern for coastal communities,” said study lead-author Daniel Lack, a researcher with the NOAA-supported CU Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, based at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory.

Earlier research by one of the study’s authors, James Corbett, of the University of Delaware, linked particle pollution to premature deaths among coastal populations.

During the summer of 2006, Lack and colleagues, aboard the NOAA ship Ronald H. Brown, analyzed the exhaust from more than 200 commercial vessels, including cargo ships, tankers and cruise ships, in the Gulf of Mexico, Galveston Bay, and the Houston Ship Channel.

The researchers also examined the chemistry of particles in ship exhaust to understand what makes ships such hefty polluters.

Ships emit sulfates, the same particles associated with diesel-engine cars and trucks which motivated improvements in on-road vehicle fuel standards. Sulfate emissions from ships vary with the concentration of sulfur in ship fuel, the authors found. Globally, fuel sulfur content is regulated under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships. As a result, some ships use “cleaner,” low-sulfur fuels, while others continue to use the high-sulfur counterparts.

Yet, sulfates make up just under half of shipping’s total particle emissions, according to the NOAA-CU study. Organic pollutants and sooty, black carbon, which make up the other half of emissions, are not directly targeted by today’s regulations. A 2008 study by Lack’s team focused exclusively on soot.

Emissions of these non-sulfate particles, the study found, depend on the operating speed of the engine and the amount of lubricating oil needed to deal with wear and tear from burning less-refined fuels.

“Fortunately, engines burning ‘cleaner,’ low-sulfur fuels tend to require less complex lubricants. So the sulfur fuel regulations have the indirect effect of reducing the organic particles emitted,” said Corbett.

One surprising result of burning low-sulfur fuels: while total particle emissions diminish, the time the remaining particles spend in the air appears to increase. It’s while they’re airborne that particles pose a risk to human health and affect climate.

Lack and colleagues found that the organic and black carbon portion of ship exhaust is less likely to form cloud droplets. As a result, these particles remain suspended for longer periods of time before being washed to the ground through precipitation.

NOAA-supported Cooperative Institutes are academic and nonprofit research institutions that demonstrate the highest level of performance and conduct research that supports NOAA’s Mission Goals and Strategic Plan.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

- from noaanews. 26 Feb 2009

No clear record of nuclear materials

A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department’s inventory records.

That’s just one of the findings of a report released yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded “the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material.”

Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.

“Considering the potential health risks associated with these materials and the potential for misuse should they fall into the wrong hands, the quantities written off were significant,” the report says. “Even in small quantities normally held by individual domestic licensees, special nuclear materials such as enriched uranium and plutonium, if not properly handled, potentially pose serious health hazards.”

Auditors also found that waste processing facilities could not locate or explain the whereabouts of significant quantities of uranium and other nuclear material that Energy Department records showed they held. In another case, Energy officials had no record of the fact that one academic institution had loaned a 32-gram plutonium-beryllium source to another institution.

The audit was a follow-up to a 2001 probe that found similar record-keeping problems. “Key commitments made by the department were not completed nearly eight years after our earlier audit,” Friedman reported.

More than 100 academic and commercial institutions and government agencies lease nuclear materials that are owned by Energy. The department, along with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, is supposed to track these materials through the centralized accounting system known as the Nuclear Materials Management and Safeguards System, or NMMSS.

“Due to the inconsistencies documented in our report, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the department to accurately identify the type and quantity of its nuclear materials affected if an incident occurred at one of the sites whose NMMSS inventory we could not verify,” the inspector general stated in Monday’s report.

In a written response to the report, Glenn Podonsky, the chief health, safety and security officer at Energy, largely concurred with the findings and recommendations for improving inventory records.

- from globalsecuritynewswire. 24 Feb 2009

Romania and Bulgaria in illegal nuclear state aid accusations

Both the Bulgarian and Romanian governments today find themselves accused offering hundred of millions of euros in illegal state aid to the nuclear industry in violation of the EC Treaty.

In order to build the Cernavoda 3 and 4 reactors, the Romania government announced in August 2008 plans for loan guarantees to the Romanian state utility S.N. Nuclearelectrica for loans totalling 220 million euros, a payment of 350 million euros from the state budget for the provision of heavy water for the Cernavoda nuclear power plant between 2009 and 2012, and 800 million of direct investment from the country’s National Development Fund which is also part of the state budget.

In October last year, the Bulgarian Government announced the allocation of
300 Million Bulgarian Leva (154.5 million euros) from the state budget to state-owned energy group Bulgarian Energy Holding EAD and the National Electric Company (NEK) with the purpose of constructing of a new nuclear power plant at Belene. In December 2008, the Bulgarian Government announced a further allocation of 400 Million Bulgarian Leva (205 million euros) from the state budget for increasing the capital of Bulgarian Energy Holding.

At least the two governments can’t be accused of cover-up on this occasion. They made the announcements in public decrees (Decree 259 in Bulgaria and Decision 643/2007 in Romania).

The allocations of these massive sums favour the countries’ respective nuclear industries and so distort their energy markets. This is where Romania and Bulgaria risk violating the EC Treaty. How are other energy generators expected to compete against such blatant bias? Where are the similar sums for energy efficiency programmes and renewable energy technologies?

The Romanian and Bulgarian governments want to hand massive financial advantages to the nuclear industry in return for what? Certainly not energy security, jobs or meeting carbon emissions targets. Can’t the nuclear industry operate without these massive subsidies? If not, why not, is the question you should be asking yourself. Again.

- from greenpeace. 25 Feb 2009

Climate-ecology attribution chain

Many are obviously curious about whether certain current regional environmental changes are traceable to global climate change. There are a number of large-scale changes that clearly qualify—rapid warming of the arctic/sub-arctic regions for example, and earlier spring onset in the northern hemisphere and the associated phenological changes in plants and animals. But as one moves to smaller scales of space or time, global-to-local connections become more difficult to establish. This is due to the combined effect of the resolutions of climate models, the intrinsic variability of the system and the empirical climatic, environmental, or ecological data—the signal to noise ratio of possible causes and observed effects. Thus recent work by ecologists, climate scientists, and hydrologists in the western United States relating global climate change, regional climate change, and regional ecological change is of great significance. Together, their results show an increasing ability to link the chain at smaller and presumably more viscerally meaningful and politically tractable scales.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago, a paper in Science by Phil van Mantgem of the USGS, and others, showed that over the last few decades, background levels of tree mortality have been increasing in undisturbed old-growth forests in the western United States, without the accompanying increase in tree “recruitment” (new trees) that would balance the ledger over time. Background mortality is the regular ongoing process of tree death, un-related to the more visible, catastrophic mortality caused by such events as fires, insect attacks, and windstorms, and typically is less than 1% per year. It is that portion of tree death due to the direct and indirect effects of tree competition, climate (often manifest as water stress), and old age. Because many things can affect background mortality, van Mantgem et. al. were very careful to minimize the potential for other possible explanatory variables via their selection of study sites, while still maintaining a relatively long record over a wide geographic area. These other possible causes include, especially, increases in crowding (density; a notorious confounding factor arising from previous disturbances and/or fire suppression), and edge effects (trees close to an
opening experience a generally warmer and drier micro-climate than those in the forest interior).

They found that in each of three regions, the Pacific Northwest, California, and the Interior West, mortality rates have doubled in 17 to 29 years (depending on location), and have been doing so across all dominant species, all size classes, and all elevations. The authors show with downscaled climate information that the increasing mortality rates likely corresponds to summer soil moisture stress increases over that time that are driven by increases in temperature with little or no change in precipitation in these regions. Fortunately, natural background mortality rates in western forests are typically less than 0.5% per year, so rate doublings over ~20-30 years, by themselves, will not have large immediate impacts. What the longer term changes will be is an open question however, depending on future climate and tree recruitment/mortality rates. Nevertheless, the authors have shown clearly that mortality rates have been increasing over the last ~30 years. Thus the $64,000 question: are these changes attributable in part or all to human-induced global warming?

Yes, argues a pair of December papers in the Journal of Climate, and a 2008 work in Science. The studies, by Bonfils et. al. (2008), Pierce et. al. (2008), and Barnett et. al. (2008), link observed western temperature and temperature-induced snowmelt processes to human-forced (greenhouse gases, ozone, and aerosols) global climate changes. The authors used various combinations of three GCMs, two statistical downscaling techniques (to account for micro-climate effects that aren’t resolved in the GCMs), and a high resolution hydrology model to experiment with the various possible causes of the observed climatic changes and the robustness of the methods. The possible causes included the usual list of suspects: natural climatic variability, the human-induced forcings just mentioned, and non-human forcings (solar and volcanic). Climate models were chosen specifically for their ability to account for important, natural climatic fluctuations in the western US that influence temperature, precipitation and snowpack dynamics, particularly the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and El Niño/La Niña oscillations, and/or their ability to generate the daily climatic values necessary for input to the hydrologic model. The relevant climate variables included various subsets of minimum and maximum daily temperatures from January to March (JFM), their corresponding monthly averages, degree days (days with mean T>0ºC), and the ratio of Snow Water Equivalent (SWE) to water year precipitation (P). In each case, multiple hundred year control runs were generated with two GCMs to isolate the natural variability, and then forced runs from previous model intercomparison projects were used to identify the impacts of the various forcings.

The results? The authors estimate that about 50% of the April 1 SWE equivalent, and 60% of river discharge date advances and January-to-March temperature increases, cannot be accounted for by either natural variability or non-human forcings. Bonfils et al also note that the decreases in SWE are due to January-to-March temperature increases, not winter precipitation decreases, as the observational record over the last several decades shows. The April snow is a key variable, for along with spring through early fall temperatures, it has a great bearing on growing season soil moisture status throughout the western United States, and thus directly on forest productivity and demographic processes.

- from realclimate. 19 Feb 2009

Michael Moore talking

Michigan, one of the hardest hit areas of the nation, Michigan’s unemployment now at 8.7 percent.

Thousands and thousands of jobs, more jobs, are going to be eliminated, on top of the already thousands of more jobs that will be eliminated in the next few years because General Motors and Chrysler build twentieth century vehicles that either nobody wants or we shouldn’t be building, considering the climate crisis that’s in front of us.

It happened because the workers don’t control the means of production.

If the autoworkers, years and years ago, could have had a say in the cars that were being built, the Big Three would have built cars that people wanted to drive, instead of the kind of crappy-mobiles that they continue to build, the gas-guzzlers they continue to build. And people wanted something different, and nobody listened, because the auto companies were arrogant, and they had—they have always had the attitude that what’s good for— the old saying—General Motors is good for the country. Well, the country changed; General Motors didn’t change. And so, now the people have suffered as a result of it. If we had a democratic economy, where the people, we the people, had a say in the decisions that are made, in terms of how our corporations are run, the things that they produce for our society, what we need collectively as a society, we probably wouldn’t find ourselves in some of the positions that we’re in right now.

I don’t call it a bailout. This is a robbery. They are looting the US Treasury. I can’t believe that they’ve gotten away with it so far. They, over the last eight years, but really over the last twenty-eight years, have operated in a matter—I don’t know how quite to describe Wall Street, but just imagine a bunch of junkies just putting more junk into their system and constantly in some kind of feeding frenzy to get more of that junk. And it’s like the US Congress just decided to take a big hypodermic needle and give them another injection—a word they actually like to use—of the junk, of the heroin. I think that—nothing has made me more upset, other than the war, in the last umpteen years, and it’s—I start to think about it, and my brain starts to expand.

Anyone who tries to make a profit from healthcare will be arrested.

It should be a crime to make a profit off somebody being sick. I mean, seriously, you know, 100, 200 years from now, anthropologists, they’re going to dig us up, and they’re going to wonder, who were these people? Look at—they’re going to say, “Look at this. When somebody got sick in their society, they actually made them fork over money so that somebody else could make a profit off the fact that they got cancer or had a broken arm or, you know, was in a car accident, or whatever.” I mean, we’re going to look awfully cruel, and they’re not going to understand why we would do such a thing, why we just wouldn’t take care of people, why that wouldn’t be essentially a human right. So, you know, I think it should be a crime. And I’m hoping that we have a universal healthcare system that is nonprofit. Nonprofit, nobody should be making any money off this.

The French pay such low taxes, I’d like us to pay as little—as few taxes as they pay. Of course, when you say that, people are going, “What? He must have had that wrong.” And, of course, see, on paper, we don’t call a lot of things taxes. So, it sometimes looks like we pay more taxes than the Europeans, but their taxes cover real things. They get something back for the taxes they pay for. So if you live in France, your healthcare is completely free, your college is completely free, and that’s any college, a technical—all the way from a technical college to the Sorbonne, you go for free. Child care is free or almost free, depending on what your income level is. And the list goes on and on and on. And that’s why, you know, out of all the demonstrating and the rioting that goes on in France over various things, you never see them demonstrating over paying too high of taxes. And why is that? Well, that’s because they get something for it.

We have to pay for our kids’ college education. We have to pay, if you’re not covered by a group plan by your employer—and even then, you know, essentially, you’re paying for it, because you could maybe getting that money in wages. Obviously, we have to pay for our own childcare, all these other things. You know, if you add up what the average person pays, if you’re buying your own healthcare insurance, average family pays $1,000 a month. If you’re—what are you paying on your college loan? I mean, you know, people anywhere from $200 to $800 a month maybe on their college loan. How much do you pay in daycare every week for your kids? A couple hundred bucks? More? Probably. But we don’t call those taxes. But if you add all that up, in addition to the income tax we do pay, we pay more than the French and the Germans and the people in these other countries.

So, what I’m suggesting is, is that we start to look at this whole tax thing in a different way. And I understand why Americans, you know, don’t like to pay taxes, other than their own, you know, self-absorption sometimes and a sort of “me, me, me” society that we live in, whereas these other societies are constructed more around the word “we.” Even though that’s the first word of our founding document—“We the people”—it really is about me, me, getting me, getting my, myself, me, my, my, looking out for yourself. “Hey, I got mine; you get yours. Hey, you’re not my problem; I’ve got to take care of myself. You take care of yourself.” You know, that’s kind of the American way of looking at things. That’s not the way they look at things all the time in some of these other countries. And so, maybe if we thought a little differently about this and if Americans actually saw some—I mean, ask the average person what are you getting for your taxes that you’re paying, you know, $10 billion a month are going to the Iraq war. I mean, people can’t even get their potholes fixed here in Michigan on the roads, let alone, you know, being—having any good feelings about, you know, what they’re getting when they’re paying taxes.

there’s over a billion people on this planet that don’t have access to clean drinking water. You know, what if we made it an American mission to make sure that the entire third world had clean drinking water? One of the statistics I read was it would cost about $10 per person in the third world of people who don’t have the clean drinking water right now. So, that’s—geez, that’s $10 times a billion people? $10 billion. That’s just October in Iraq. For the money that we’re spending in Iraq in October, we could provide clean drinking water to most of the people that don’t have it. And I, as an American, would rather be known by the people who are struggling to survive in the third world as the country that gave them clean drinking water or gave them other things that they need to help them in their daily existence to survive. I think most Americans would rather be known for that. Instead, we’re known as the invaders and the occupiers and the people who prop up the regimes in these countries, and I’m tired of that. I’m really tired of it.

I think a lot of people don’t realize that those who make over $102,000 a year pay no Social Security tax on any of that money they make over $102,000. I think people think that that’s just a flat tax, whatever it is. I forget what the percentage is now, something like six-and-a-half, seven percent that’s on your paycheck that goes to Social Security. It’s a flat tax that everyone pays, so it doesn’t matter, you know, if you make $25,000 a year or $55,000 a year or $75,000 a year, you’re paying that—that percentage of your income automatically goes to Social Security. But once you reach $102,000, you’re home free, you don’t pay anything, zero, after $102,000. Why isn’t everyone’s income, all their income, taxed for Social Security? Because I’ve got to tell you, a person who’s making a million dollars a year, they can afford to pay the Social Security tax on that amount over $102,000, but it’s a lot harder for a person making $25,000 a year to have almost seven percent of their income go to Social Security. That’s a big bite out of them.

Senator Dodd, his staff did the research on this, and he actually brought it up in one of the debates—if the rich paid the same Social Security tax—not more- tomorrow, if we had that money, tomorrow, there’d be enough money in Social Security until something like 2075. Almost to the next century, we’d have enough money in Social Security. There’d be no Social Security solvency problem. The reason we have the problem is because the rich don’t pay. They don’t pay their fair and equal share.

Bush and his Wall Street cronies wanted to take people’s Social Security, privatize it, put it into these private accounts, and put it into the stock market. That’s what he wanted to do four years ago. That was the—it was the first thing he tried to do when he got elected for the first time there in 2004, when he was elected. And he was going to—our money—just imagine, our Social Security would be in the stock market crash right now. Thank God that didn’t happen. But that’s the way they think, and I think a different way.

Michael Moore talking with Amy Goodman

Michael Moore, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, author and activist. His new book is Mike’s Election Guide ’08, and his new online film is called Slacker Uprising: A Look at the Youth Vote. His earlier books, Stupid White Men…And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation and Dude, Where’s My Country? His other films, among them, Fahrenheit 911, as well as Sicko, and, of course, Roger and Me shot Michael Moore to fame.

- from democracynow. 31 Oct 2008

Coolerado air conditioners

The Coolerado air conditioner uses a thermodynamic cycle called the Maisotsenko Cycle (M-Cycle) that capitalizes on natural, clean energy – psychrometric energy – found in our atmosphere. This cycle can improve any energetic or refrigeration cycle.

The patented Coolerado heat and mass exchanger was developed to economically take advantage of the M-Cycle. A heat and mass exchanger (HMX) consists of several plates of a special plastic that is designed to wick water evenly on one side and transfer heat through the other side. The plates are stacked on each other, separated by channel guides.

The purpose of the channel guides is to provide structure to the exchanger as well as direct air movement within the HMX. The channel guides divide the incoming air stream into product air and working air. The product air is always separate from the working air and stays within dry channels the entire length of the exchanger. The product air is cooled sensibly (rejecting its heat to the working air), and can be designed to cool below the wet bulb temperature of the incoming air stream. The product air travels the distance of the exchanger and into the space designated for cooling.

The working air initially enters dry channels where it is pre-cooled sensibly before it is fractioned into multiple streams which are directed into wet channels. The heat from the product air is transferred to the working air in the wet channels by means of evaporation (mass transfer and state change). The heat is exhausted out the sides of the HMX and then to the atmosphere.

Because the heat from the product air is rejected to the working air through heat exchange surfaces in the exchanger, the product air only experiences sensible cooling – cooling without adding humidity. The product air stream is completely separate from the working air and never comes in contact with a wetted surface. This process occurs multiple times in a short physical space within the exchanger, resulting in progressively colder product and working air temperatures.

The HMX system is modular, so the size and shape of a Coolerado air conditioner can be changed to meet user requirements. The Coolerado computer modeling program can be used to design for specific needs. In addition, the product air to working air ratio can be adjusted for a particular application.

- from coolerado

Travel to Antarctica is increasing

Recreational travel is growing in Antarctica, and is raising concern over the safety of the place. According to Clarin newspaper, the number of cruise ships that are navigating this area has gone from 35 in the early ’90s to 258 last summer, and in the same period five accidents have been registered.

Some might say that tourism can create awareness over subjects such as climate change, but it’s hard to believe that pushing large cruise ships in areas so delicate as Antarctica is going to have a positive effect.

‘climate tourism’: as global warming threatens to make some areas disappear, people are eager to see them before they’re gone. One of this areas is Antarctica, the southern pole of the earth. [This is fraud]

A special report on Clarin newspaper informs that the tourism wave to this area began in the early ’90s, and that the number of cruise ships navigating its waters grew seven times in the past 16 years. About 44605 people have visited the area in that period. And, of course, there have been accidents: five in the past two years.

The size of the ships has grown too: they used to be for 50 to 350 passengers, but this summer large ships for up to 3100 passengers have been granted access to the area. Without allowing travelers to descend the boats though.

Even though most of the ships that cross these waters are gathered in the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO), which verifies that ships have the necessary security measures, over the past years independent ships have entered the area messing around. According to the mentioned article, some ships –especially those doing ‘adventure’ travel– have painted gratifies in historical places and introduced species not native to the area (dogs).

Some of the biggest risks, however, are not the ones related to descending in the region, but the ones linked to navigating. Some icebergs are strong enough to break a ship and sink it or produce spills. Just remember the Explorer incident in December 2007.

Another concern are of course the awful spills of sewage and laundry water usually thrown by ships.

Argentina announced in 2007 that it might limit tourism to Antarctica, but real measures do not appear to have taken place. Clarin says the country has pushed before the IAATO to increase regulations to visit the area, but tourism continues to increase.

Most people who care for the environment and like to know different cultures enjoy traveling, but just how far is it OK to go in exploring areas in danger?

- from treehugger. 24 Feb 2009

Please avoid travel to these places. Watch National Geographic or Discovery channels.

500 MW of solar power plants with Pasadena

Princeton, N.J.-based NRG Energy said today its signed a deal to develop up to 500 MW of solar power plants with Pasadena, Calif.-based eSolar in California and the Southwest. NRG plans to invest $10 million for an equity stake and the development rights to three projects and a portfolio of power-purchase agreements developed by eSolar, which is moving from being a project developer to a technology and equipment provider.

The deal represents NRG’s first foray in solar. The company has invested in wind (see BP, NRG start up Texas wind farm), biofuels (see NRG Energy testing GreenFuel’s algae system in Louisiana), and carbon capture (see NRG, Powerspan to demo large scale carbon capture). Its 48 plants have an energy generation capacity of 24 GW.

NRG plans to sell electricity to utilities. NRG says it will develop a basis on which to build future eSolar plants through the oversight of the design, construction and commissioning of eSolar’s first commercial demonstration CSP plant, currently underway in Southern California (see SCE brings more solar thermal to California).

Southern California Edison (SCE), a division of Edison International (NYSE: EIX), signed a contract with eSolar to purchase 245 MW of solar power. eSolar says the power plant will be the first fully functioning solar thermal power tower plant built in the United States (see Cleantech Group picks winners and losers in concentrated solar thermal).

- from cleantech. 23 Feb 2009

eSolar, a producer of large-scale solar thermal power plants
NRG Energy, is a wholesale power generation company

1,000MW of marine energy by 2020

Aquamarine Power Ltd (“Aquamarine” or the “Company”) has signed a Development Agreement with Airtricity, the renewable energy development division of Scottish and Southern Energy (“SSE”), aimed at developing sites capable of hosting 1,000MW of marine energy by 2020.

Under the Agreement, the two companies will enter into a 50:50 joint venture to develop wave and tidal energy sites in the UK and Republic of Ireland. Work on the development of the first two sites has already started, with plans to roll out further sites over the next three years.

- from aquamarinepower. 23 Feb 2009

Oyster® for power

Oyster® is a hydro-electric Wave Energy Converter, designed to convert renewable energy harnessed from ocean waves into usable electricity.

Oyster® consists of an Oscillator fitted with pistons and fixed to the nearshore sea bed. Each passing wave activates the Oscillator, pumping high pressure water through a sub-sea pipeline to the shore. Onshore, conventional hydro-electric generators convert this high-pressure water into electrical power.

Oyster® is designed to be deployed in multi-MW arrays. With a peak power of 300-600kW per Oyster®, a commercial farm of just ten devices could provide clean renewable energy to a town of 3,000 homes.

Designed according to the principle that simple is best and less is more, Oyster® marries innovative wave energy technology advances with proven conventional hydro-electric components in a system which will produce a reliable and cost-competitive supply of electricity.

Many wave energy devices currently under development rely on complex unproven technologies deployed in inaccessible offshore locations. Oyster® is different. Its offshore component is a simple, highly reliable mechanical flap with minimal submerged moving parts. There is no underwater generator, power electronics or gearbox. The complex power generation equipment remains easily accessible onshore.

Designed to be deployed at depths of 10-12m, Oyster® will benefit from the more consistent seas and narrower directional spread of waves found nearshore. Reduced wave height and load enhance Oyster®’s natural survivability. Any excess energy is spilled over the top of Oyster®’s flap; its rotational capacity allowing it to literally duck under the waves.

The calmer nearshore wave climate allows Oyster® to capture a high percentage of annual average power and deliver consistent power supply. Its lightweight structure gives an excellent power-to-weight ratio with an annual average output competitive with devices weighing up to five times more. With multiple pumps feeding a single onshore generator, an Oyster® farm offers good economies of scale. Modular mass production will minimise capital costs, whilst ease of installation, accessibility and routine maintenance will offer cost-competitive operating costs.

Oyster® uses water as its hydraulic fluid, eliminating environmental risks associated with oil hydraulics or underwater electrical equipment. Measuring just 18m x 12m x 2m, Oyster® has a minimal environmental footprint. Oyster® is silent in operation and contains no toxic substances. Based on figures from the Carbon Trust, each individual Oyster®’s annual carbon saving could be as much as 500 tonnes.

Oyster® has been under development by Aquamarine Power since 2005, in partnership with the award-winning marine energy research group at Queens University, Belfast.

Following extensive numerical modelling and wave tank testing at 1/40th and 1/20th scale, the first full-scale Oyster® was fabricated by Isleburn in Scotland in 2008. Oyster® has undergone extensive onshore testing and the reliability of its design has been fully certified by independent third parties.

Installation of Oyster® at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney will be managed by Fugro Seacore, one of the world’s foremost geotechnical drilling and marine construction contractors. Sea trials are scheduled to commence in autumn 2009.

- from aquamarinepower

Offshored emissions

The full extent of the west’s responsibility for Chinese emissions of greenhouse gases has been revealed by a new study. The report shows that half of the recent rise in China’s carbon dioxide pollution is caused by the manufacturing of goods for other countries – particularly developed nations such as the UK.

Last year, China officially overtook the US as the world’s biggest CO2 emitter. But the new research shows that about a third of all Chinese carbon emissions are the result of producing goods for export.

The research, due to be published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters, underlines “offshored emissions” as a key unresolved issue in the run up to this year’s crucial Copenhagen summit, at which world leaders will attempt to thrash out a deal to replace the Kyoto protocol.

Developing countries are under pressure to commit to binding emissions cuts in Copenhagen. But China is resistant, partly because it does not accept responsibility for the emissions involved in producing goods for foreign markets.

Under Kyoto, emissions are allocated to the country where they are produced. By these rules, the UK can claim to have reduced emissions by about 18% since 1990 – more than sufficient to meet its Kyoto target.

But research published last year by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) suggests that, once imports, exports and international transport are accounted for, the real change for the UK has been a rise in emissions of more than 20%.

China, as the world’s biggest export manufacturer, is key to explaining this kind of discrepancy. According to Glen Peters, one of the authors of the new report at Oslo’s Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research, about 9% of total Chinese emissions are the result of manufacturing goods for the US, and 6% are from producing goods for Europe.

Academics and campaigners increasingly say responsibility for these emissions lies with the consumer countries.

Dieter Helm, professor of economics at Oxford University, said “focusing on consumption rather than production of emissions is the only intellectually and ethically sound solution”. “We’ve simply outsourced our production,” he added.”

By contrast, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc), argues that these “embedded emissions” in Chinese-produced goods are not the UK’s.”The UK calculates and reports its emissions according to the internationally agreed criteria set out by the UN,” it says.

However, the Decc admitted to the Guardian that “the footprint associated with the UK’s consumption has risen”.

Even if world leaders did agree a deal based on consumption rather than production of CO2, it is unclear how national figures would be calculated.

Jonathon Porritt, head of the Sustainable Development Commission, said: “Ultimately, the only place to register emissions is in the country of origin – in this case, China. Otherwise, the whole global accounting system for greenhouse gases will be undermined by the complexity of double-accounting.”

The difficulty of measuring exported emissions is reflected in the fact that the new research focuses on the years 2002 to 2005. Relevant trade data is not yet available for subsequent years.

However, Dieter Helm believes these challenges can be overcome with political will. “It’s complicated but there are ways of taking consumption into account, such as a border tax on carbon transfer,” he said.

- from guardian. 23 Feb 2009

No change; just continuity

John Brennan was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations during the CIA period in the run-up to the Iraq war, so he sat there at Tenet’s knee when they passed judgement on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision making.

Jami Miscik was the Deputy Director for Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war. So she went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002, the phony white paper that was prepared by Paul Pillar in October 2002. She helped with the drafting of the speech that Colin Powell gave to the United Nations in 2003, which made the phony case for war to the international community.

So, when George Tenet said, “slam dunk, we can provide all the intelligence you need,” to the President in December of 2002, it was people like Jami Miscik and John Brennan who were part of the team who provided that phony intelligence. People at the CIA are worried about—and there will never be any accountability for these violations and some of the unconscionable acts committed at the CIA, which essentially amount to war crimes, when you’re talking about torture and abuse and secret prisons. So, where are we, in terms of change? This sounds like more continuity.

All of the operational people I’ve talked to know that the people who were turned over to the Arab intelligence services—and remember, this is Egypt, this is Syria, this is Jordan, this is Saudi Arabia—that all of these foreign intelligence services commit torture and abuse. Now, if any of these suspects had anything to say to us that was of any utility, we would have kept them. We would have controlled these people. They would have become our sources and our assets. When we turned them over, we were turning over people who we felt had very little to offer, and we were turning over them to them, to the Arab liaison services for torture and abuse.

John Brennan has defended the warrantless eavesdropping. John Brennan has basically defended all of the violations that were committed at the CIA in the run-up to the war and in the postwar period. So the signal this sends to CIA employees who tried to get it right—and there were a few who tried to get it right—is the worst kind of signal. And if this is Obama’s judgement about a national security team, it’s very reminiscent of what Bill Clinton did in 1993, when he appointed people such as Jim Woolsey and Les Aspin and Warren Christopher and Tony Lake to the national security positions, and all of them had to be removed before the first term was over. So this is very disquieting, what we’re learning now.

Well, then you have to wonder who he’s relying on, in terms of advice, to keep Bob Gates at the Pentagon, which is another example of continuity and not change. You mean to tell me that there are no Democrats who are qualified to become the Secretary of Defense? Bob Gates has supported all of the policies that Obama said he was going to look at very carefully and seemed to oppose: expansion of NATO, bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, deployment of missiles in Poland, deployment of radars in the Czech Republic, the continued acquisition of a national missile defense, which is the most expensive item in the Pentagon’s procurement project, an item that we’ve spent over $500 billion on in the last forty years. Again, this is not change; this is continuity.

It’s extremely, extremely disturbing. When you read Jane Mayer’s book, the worst and most onerous chapter is the chapter on what the CIA did to people in secret sites, from small coffins to waterboarding. John Brennan was there at the time. To hear him say that this stuff works is really—or that it’s very important to do is really remarkable. He’s saying that at the same time when we know about the Center’s client, Maher Arar, being sent to Syria, tortured, so-called diplomatic assurances somehow able to protect him. Another Guantanamo people—other Guantanamo people sent to Egypt with the worst kind of torture. So, the idea that Brennan, who should probably, along with Tenet, be facing some kind of war crimes trial, is actually heading the transition on this is extremely disturbing.

Jami Miscik was the Deputy Director was the Deputy Director of Intelligence during the run-up to the war and in the immediate postwar period. That was a period of politicized intelligence. That was a period of the corruption of the process. That was a period when all analytic trade craft, all of the rules of analytic trade craft were ignored. She passed judgment on the October 2002 estimate. She passed on the white paper, which was the phony paper that violated the CIA charter, because it took classified material and then declassified it and sent to the Congress only days before the vote on the authorization to use force in Iraq in October 2002.

She was part of the slam-dunk team that George Tenet was so proud of that prepared a phony—not only that phony estimate, but the speech that Colin Powell gave, that outrageous speech with twenty-eight allegations, all of them false, prepared in February of 2003, which was the case to the international community. Hundreds of millions of people heard that phony speech, and it’s still an embarrassment to Colin Powell to this very day. She was part of the team that allowed George Bush to go before this country in January of 2003 in a State of the Union address and use a fabricated intelligence report to say that Iraq was getting enriched uranium from a West African country. Jami Miscik was a part of all of this.

And a lot of us were very pleased when Porter Goss actually fired Jami Miscik. He probably fired her for the wrong reasons and not the right reasons, but we were glad to see her go.

And now, for Obama to turn around, put Jami Miscik back in the CIA in transition and Brennan in the transition process, and then you look at people such as the former deputy to Tenet, John McLaughlin, who is also an intelligence adviser, and Rob Richer, who was a key operations adviser, who was the deputy to Jose Rodriguez, who is now being investigated by the Justice Department for the illegal destruction of the torture tapes, you have to wonder, who is Obama relying on for advice on the Washington community? He’s only been in Washington, we know, for two years, and obviously there are things he needs to know about national security, the CIA and the intelligence community. And obviously, he’s listening to the wrong people.

Discussion: Melvin Goodman, Michael Ratner, Amy Goodman

Melvin Goodman, Former CIA and State Department analyst. He is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and director of the Center’s National Security Project. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA. He is also co-author of the book,Bush League Diplomacy: How the Neoconservatives are Putting the World at Risk.

Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights. His latest book is The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book.

- from democracynow. 17 Nov 2008

Gulf War Syndrome

A congressionally mandated report released concluded that “Gulf War Syndrome” is a legitimate condition suffered by more than 175,000 US war veterans who were exposed to chemical toxins in the 1991 Gulf War. The report could help veterans who have battled the government for treatment of a wide range of unexplained neurological illnesses, from brain cancer to multiple sclerosis. The Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses said, “Scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans.” The report links the illness to a drug given to troops to protect against nerve gas and to pesticides that were widely used to protect against sand flies and other pests. For much of the past seventeen years, government officials have maintained that Gulf War veterans were merely suffering the effects of wartime stress.

- from DemocracyNow. 18 Nov 2008

Privatising US Treasury

There’s a few elements now that are being described as illegal that we’re finding out. First of all, the equity deals that were negotiated with the largest banks and also some smaller banks, representing $250 billion worth of the bailout money, this is the deal to inject capital into the banks in exchange for equity. The idea was to address the so-called credit crunch to get banks lending again. The legislation that enabled this was quite explicit that it had to encourage lending. Barney Frank, who was one of the architects of that legislation, has said that it violates the act if the money is not going to that purpose and is instead going to bonuses, is instead going to dividends, going to salaries, going to mergers. He said that violates the acts, i.e. it’s illegal. But what we know is that it’s going precisely to those purposes. It is going to bonuses. It is going to shareholders. And it is not going to lending. The banks have been quite explicit about this. Citibank has talked about using the money to buy other banks.

Then there’s other aspects of this that are borderline illegal. We found out that in the midst of the crisis, the Bush—the Treasury Department pushed through a tax windfall for the banks, a piece of legislation that allows the banks to save a huge amount of money when they merge with each other. And the estimate is that this represents a loss of $140 billion worth of tax revenue for the US government. Many tax attorneys who were interviewed by the Washington Post said that they felt that the way in which the Treasury Department went about this by unilaterally changing the tax code was illegal, that this had to include Congress. Congress only found out about it after the fact.

There’s another piece of this puzzle that is also borderline illegal, which is that in addition to the $700 billion that we are discussing, the $700 billion bailout, there’s another $2 trillion that’s been handed out by the Federal Reserve in emergency loans to financial institutions, to banks, that actually we don’t really know who they’re handing the money out to, because, apparently, it’s a secret. They could be handing it out to a range of other corporations but they’re saying that they won’t disclose who has received these taxpayer loans, because it could cause a run on the banks, it could cause the market to lose confidence in the institutions that have taken these loans. Once again, that represents an additional $2 trillion.

The other thing that the Fed won’t disclose is what they have accepted as collateral in exchange for these loans. This is a really key point, because, of course, at the heart of the financial crisis is—are these so- called distressed assets. The value of these assets is enormously controversial. They may be worth very little. So if the Fed has accepted distressed assets as collateral in exchange for these loans, there’s a very good chance the taxpayers aren’t going to be getting this money back. So Bloomberg News has launched a lawsuit in federal court to find out who has received the loans and what has been accepted as collateral, because they believe that this lack of transparency is illegal. So that’s why we’re calling this the “trillion-dollar crime scene” or the “multi-trillion-dollar crime scene.” And they’re really challenging lawmakers to call them out, the Treasury is.

Initially Henry Paulson’s original three-page proposal, the $700 trillion stickup, where he basically said, “Give me $700 trillion. Don’t ask any questions. I can never be challenged by any arm of government or any court of law.” Now, that aspect of the bailout was supposedly dealt with, and we were all reassured that there was going to be transparency, accountability, legality. But now we’re finding out that, in fact, Henry Paulson has achieved his original goal by stealth, because there is no accountability, and lawmakers are very hesitant to challenge this, because they’re afraid of causing a run on the banks, of causing more market instability. So, essentially, what the Bush administration has done is said, “We dare you to challenge us and be responsible for the great depression.” And the Democrats, not known for their firm spines, have so far failed to challenge them in anything other than rhetoric.

Democrats actually—they have a lot of leeway in which to act on this. If Barney Frank means what he says, that this violates the act, then of course they can challenge the deals that have already been signed, these terrible equity deals that are so much worse than what Gordon Brown negotiated in Britain. Gordon Brown got voting rights at the banks that they bailed out, seats on the boards, 12 percent dividends for UK taxpayers, as opposed to the five percent negotiated in the US and no voting rights and no seats on the board. Other thing Gordon Brown did is he got it in writing that the banks had to start lending, as opposed to Henry Paulson, who didn’t get it in writing, and the banks are not lending.

So, there is room to move, but, the logic that has really gripped lawmakers is that they can’t rock the boat. And we hear this across the board, really, in the talk of, who to appoint as Treasury Secretary, how to approach economic policy in this period. We hear all these phrases, continuity, smooth transition. And really, that’s code for more of the same, because what the market wants is for there not to be tough regulation, is for the free money to keep flowing. What will upset the market, what will create a rocky transition, is if it’s clear that there’s a new sheriff in town, that they’re going to have to follow the law, that they’re going to cut off all of this corporate welfare, there’s going to be real accountability, real conditions attached to the money. You know what? The market really doesn’t want that.

Unfortunately for the market, voters have just voted for change. They voted for a candidate who really turned the election into a referendum on this economic policy of rampant deregulation. So you’ve really got a problem here. How do you reconcile the market’s desire for status quo with the voters’ demand for real change? There is no way to do that without a few bumps along the way. And what we’re seeing from Obama’s team is an accepting of this logic that they need to give the market what it wants, which is continuity, smooth transition, which is really just code for more of the same. And when you hear names like Larry Summers being bandied about for Treasury Secretary, that’s feeding the market exactly what it wants, which is more of the same.

Washington Post revealing as part of the bailout, lawmakers changed Tax Code Section 382, which limits the kinds of tax shelters companies can use to—during corporate mergers, created to stop companies who avoid paying taxes by acquiring shell companies valued by the losses on their stocks. And then, going on in the piece, it says congressional aides admitted lawmakers agreed to keep the change hidden to avoid public outrage. Staffers with Senate Finance Committee chair, Max Baucus, a Democrat, reportedly asked that an administration briefing on the tax code change be kept secret. One congressional aide said, “We’re all nervous about saying this was illegal because of our fears about the marketplace. To the extent we want to try to publicly stop this, we’re going to be gumming up some important deals.”

That’s an incredible statement. Really what they’re saying is, we can’t afford to enforce the law, because there is an economic crisis, that somehow, because there’s an economic prices, legality is a luxury that Congress can’t afford. That is a very scary statement. But the market, particularly a bear market, has the temperament of an ill-tempered two-year-old. It throws temper tantrums whenever it doesn’t get what it wants, whenever it is frightened. So it is really dangerous to pander to the tastes of the market in this period. It needs a little bit of tough love. That’s what people have voted for. But there will be a temper tantrum if there is a clear message that the law is going to be followed.

So, we find out that there has been this backdoor, illegal tax break handed over to the banks. And, by the way, this is an example, a classic example, of disaster capitalism or the shock doctrine, where the banks had been pushing for this tax break for many, many years, they weren’t able to get it through during normal circumstances, but in a crisis they push it through the back door when everybody is focused on, at the point that they pushed this through, which was September 30th, this was the worst of the economic crisis and people were focused on the collapse of Lehman, and they were focused on the fact that they couldn’t get the bailout legislation through. So nobody even noticed this until it was too late.

The strategy of the Bush administration, is now they are saying to Congress, “We dare you to stand in the way of these bank mergers, because if you do that”—because the tax break that they handed out is what encouraged a wave of bank mergers. And it is worth pausing to question this idea that what Treasury should be doing at this point is encouraging very large bank mergers, because one of the other problems that, is at the root of this crisis, and certainly at the root of this unprecedented bailout, is that you have so many banks that are considered too big to fail. So why is it that we are not questioning this solution, the so-called solution to the crisis, which is creating even bigger banks, banks that will, once again, be too big to fail?

We’re really heading to a future where there will be, three or four large banks, all of them too big to fail, which means that if they take more and more risks, which nobody is asking them not to. It’s important to understand that in exchange for the bailout money, the banks are not being told that they can’t carry the incredible leverage rates that we saw, for instance, at Bear Stearns, thirty-three to one. They aren’t being told that they can’t invest in these high-risk, complex financial instruments. They can still do whatever they want, but now they’re even bigger, which means that if they get themselves into trouble again, they will be bailed out again. So why is it that the government is cutting their taxes to encourage these mergers? The Democrats are saying, “Well, we can’t do anything now, because if we do, we will gum up these deals.” So I think we should question all of it. Across the board, I think the assumptions are faulty.

What we saw in Iraq in the Green Zone and what we’re seeing in the US Treasury. It’s sort of the Green Zoning of the US Treasury. If we think about the way the Bush administration handled the occupation of Iraq, the working assumption was that everything that could be privatized, everything that could be outsourced, would be outsourced. And it has been very much a corporate war. But at the same time, the handing out of the contracts in the early days was done very, very quickly, because, of course, there was this manufactured emergency that we all know was based on lies, in retrospect. But that was used, that state of emergency was used to justify no-bid contracts, to justify the fact that there was very little oversight of the contractors.

And we’re seeing all of this repeat now, but just on such a massive scale, such a larger scale. First of all, when Henry Paulson and Neel Kashkari, his deputy, announced the $700 billion bailout, they also announced that they would be outsourcing all of the work. They have handed out the work to many of the banks and Wall Street law firms that really created the crisis in the first place. But in the same way, there’s also been very little competition for these contracts. They were handed out very quickly. And at the same time, as we were discussing earlier, there is very little oversight over the process.

Just to give you one example, there’s the general contractor, the really big contracting—it’s kind of the Halliburton of Treasury contracts—went to the bank, Bank of New York Mellon. Bank of New York Mellon, by the way, is one of the nine banks that got the equity deals, the cash injections in exchange for equity. And they are also very deep in this derivatives mess themselves, but they have been hired to handle a huge part of the bailout. We actually have it backwards. It’s not the banks that have been partially nationalized; it’s Treasury that has been partially privatized by the very banks that created the crisis in the first place.

One of the things that’s really extraordinary about the Bank of New York Mellon contract is that, unlike the Halliburton contract or the Bechtel contract or the Blackwater contract, we actually don’t know how much it’s worth. It’s quite extraordinary. It’s redacted. The part of the contract that would tell taxpayers how much of their money is being given to this bank and how they’re calculating the payment for Bank of New York Mellon is all blacked out. I was reassured by Treasury three weeks ago that they would be disclosing that information within days. They still haven’t disclosed it.

Another contract is for the first law firm that received a contract to advise Treasury on the equity deals, on those key equity deals that we’ve now found out are such bad deals, the ones that didn’t get it in writing that the banks were supposed to start lending, the ones that only got five percent dividends for US taxpayers when Britain got 12 percent. Well, the law firm that got the contract to advise Treasury is called Simpson Thacher Bartlett. This is a Wall Street heavy-hitter firm. They’ve negotiated some of the largest bank mergers in recent years. Simpson Thacher had represented seven of the nine banks that received the equity deals that they were advising Treasury on. And, what’s important to understand is that these banks that Simpson Thacher represents on other matters represent far more of their revenue than US Treasury. They are in a very large conflict of interest, because they really are a bankers’ law firm, not a public interest law firm.

This was an epic lost opportunity, because a lot of people assume, certainly assumed originally, that what would come out of this catastrophe, what would come out of this crisis, would be a re-examination of some of the thinking that has underpinned so much of economic policy in the past thirty years. And, Barack Obama turned his election campaign into a referendum on the mania for deregulation and free trade and really less trickle-down economics. He said the idea of giving more and more to the people at the top and waiting for it to trickle down to the people below, and that really resonated with voters, and they elected him on that platform. And let’s remember, because this really is about democracy, that his campaign turned around when the economic crisis really hit Wall Street. He was losing ground to McCain when the crisis hit Wall Street, and Obama started using this language of really putting the ideology of deregulation on trial. That’s when his numbers turned around. That’s when he went on his winning streak that took him all the way to Election Day. OK, now we’re going to fix it.

But if we look at what just came out of the G20 summit, it’s really been a reassertion of this very ideology of deregulation. On the one hand, you have the statement that you started the program with, where the world leaders said that this crisis was born of the shadow banking industry, not enough oversight, not enough regulation, too much complexity. At the same time, when they talk about solutions, they’re calling for resurrecting the failed World Trade Organization talks that collapsed this summer. And we heard, if you recall, this summer, when the Doha talks collapsed, that globalization and the Washington Consensus were dead, because developing countries had rejected it.

The other thing that they’re calling for is a greater role for the International Monetary Fund. And it’s important to understand that the reason why the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization and the whole free trade agenda, generally, has been in collapse in recent years is because countries around the world are no longer willing to accept the conditions attached to joining this club, the conditions attached to an International Monetary Fund loan. In reasserting a greater role for the International Monetary Fund, in calling for the World Trade Organization talks to get back on track, these world leaders are actually calling for more financial market deregulation, more of the same.

In the Doha talks. Although much of the focus has been on agricultural subsidies, part of the Doha talks is about financial sector deregulation and the push, particularly from Britain and the United States, for countries like China and India to open up their financial services markets to US and British and European companies who want into these markets. And what’s really striking is that you hear this language of anti-protectionism, that we can’t turn away from free trade. What this really means, is that Citibank and Barclays want to go into China, want to go into India, and they want to buy up Chinese and Indian banks, they want to get into these markets. But what’s so incredible in this moment is the hypocrisy, just the rampant hypocrisy, because Barclays and Citibank and all of the other banks that would benefit from this type of free trade are of course the very banks that are receiving massive state protection from their own governments in the form of the bailouts that we’ve just been discussing. So these sort of corporate welfare bums now want to use the language of anti-protectionism to go into other countries and buy up their assets, but, of course, they are being subsidized so heavily by their own taxpayers. So it’s a moment of high hypocrisy.

It’s also a moment of, lost opportunities, because—just to give you one example, think about what these leaders could do if they really wanted to, in terms of collaborating to harmonize regulation, so that banks were no longer able to pit governments against each other for who could offer the lowest taxes, who could give them the best tax havens, who could offer the lowest regulation. There was just a hearing on Friday about hedge funds that Henry Waxman convened. And before those hearings, we heard from one of the wealthiest hedge fund owners in the country, Ken Griffin, who’s actually an Obama supporter. Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund owner—he owns Citadel Investment—was asked by the committee whether he believed that hedge funds were sufficiently regulated and whether they should be more highly taxed. What Ken Griffin said was that if that happened, there would be even more jobs in the financial industry in the United States lost to Britain. And he talked about how his heart breaks when he goes to Canary Wharf in London and sees how many good jobs have been lost to Britain, which has, in many ways, lower—less regulation of hedge funds.

But what’s so striking about that, it would be so easy in this moment for the US government and the British government to actually harmonize their regulations so that they could—so that companies like Citadel Investment and other hedge funds would really have nowhere to run. And when you have a crisis like this, which so clearly shows the need for those types of regulations, when you have an election like there just was in the United States, where people have said clearly that this is a priority, the leaders have an opportunity to act and to close down these tax havens, to prevent this ability of governments to be pitted against one another, and have a race to the top as opposed to a race to the bottom. But they blew that opportunity, and they actually called for less regulation.

The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown extracting meaningful guarantees for taxpayers, voting rights on banks, seats on their boards, 12 percent in annual dividend payments to the government, a suspension of dividend payments to shareholders, restrictions on executive bonuses, a legal requirement banks lend money to homeowners and small businesses. Here in the United States, Washington Post reporting major US banks are on pace to spend more than half their bailout money on rewarding their shareholders. The thirty-three banks are set to receive some $163 billion in government bailouts; half of that sum will go to paying off shareholders over the next three years.

This bailout is really not a bailout at all; it’s a parting gift to the people that the Bush—that George Bush once referred to jokingly as “my base.” European colonial rulers used to do when they finally realized they had to hand over power; they would loot the treasury on the way out the door.

And the reason why there has been this dramatic change in policy just in recent days, where Henry Paulson has said, “OK, well, we’re not going to do what we originally had said at all,” which is use the bailout money to buy distressed assets, to buy bad debts, “Now we’re going to go from these equity deals with the banks to bailing out credit card companies”—the reason for that is that that first $250 billion was essentially money down the drain. They are admitting that it didn’t do what it was supposed to do, which was increase lending. So, now they’re making it up as they go along. It’s take three, take four, take five. But we’re supposed to somehow not notice that $250 billion, an astronomical sum, was just wasted, going to bonuses, going to shareholder payouts, going to CEO salaries. And now they’re trying another method to get lending going. But it really was the parting gift.

And if we think about what this money means, and this is, this crisis isn’t over, and the same people who justified this bailout, who clamored for this bailout, are the very people who are going to turn around and say to Barack Obama, “We can’t afford for you to make good on your election promises. We can’t afford universal healthcare. In fact, we can’t afford what meager services Americans get in exchange for their tax dollars, like Social Security payments.” We’re already hearing this lowering of expectations now in the national discourse. So, the money—this really is, you know, reverse Robin Hood gone mad. The money has been given to the people who needed it least, and it’s going to be used to justify austerity measures imposed against those who need it most. It’s going to be used to justify cuts to food stamps. It’s going to be used to justify cuts to Social Security, to healthcare, let alone being used to justify why more ambitious plans for a national healthcare program, for green energy are not affordable. So people have to be ready for this. the next shock is yet to come.

It shouldn’t be a blank check. The International Monetary Fund does when developing countries come and ask for a loan. Think about what they’re doing right now. The International Monetary Fund says, “You want a loan? Well, here’s our list of conditions.” They used to call it structural adjustment. The same thing could be done to the auto industry. If they’re coming for a bailout, they should be structurally adjusted, and taxpayers should be playing IMF to the auto industry and insisting that they change the way they work, that they build green automobiles, that they protect jobs. It can’t simply be a blank check.

what’s really disturbing is the way the Bush administration appears to be using the desire among Democrats to bail out the auto industry to horse trade the free trade deal with Colombia. What we’re really seeing, is a resurrection of the entire free trade—discredited free trade agenda. This crisis being used—the shock of this crisis being used to resurrect all of these discredited deals. The Colombia free trade deal, the International Monetary Fund, the Doha round, they’re all coming back from the dead at precisely the moment that we should be actually burying, for good, this whole agenda of deregulation.

Discussion: Naomi Klein, Amy Goodman

Naomi Klein, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, author of the bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Her latest piece is in The Nation; it’s called “In Praise of a Rocky Transition.” Before that, in Rolling Stone magazine, and that’s called “The Bailout Profiteers.”

- from democracynow. 17 Nov 2008

China for big solar thermal plant

Chinese Academy of Sciences designed the solar thermal power plant which will be capable to power at least 30,000 households, Chinese media reported.

Power plant will cover the surface of 13 hectares and will be funded from Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

Whole project will cost about 14,4 million US dollars. It is expected that Asia’s first 1.5 MW solar thermal power plant will start operating in 2010.

This power plant will produce about 2.7 million kWh electricity per year.

The solar power receiver will be 100 meter tall and it will collect solar thermal energy from 100 curved mirrors. It will convert solar thermal power into thermal power and there will be generated steam. Than, electricity will be produced by steam-powered generator.

- from sciencio. 19 Feb 2009

New electric vehicle from Chery

China automaker Chery has begun introduced the S18 EV, an all-battery electric vehicle it developed in-house. The S18 electric vehicle has a range of 120 to 150 km (75 to 93 miles) when fully charged, with a top speed of 120 km/h (75 mph.).

The S18 features a 336V 40 kW electric drive system, powered by a battery pack built with 40 Ah lithium-ion iron phosphate batteries. At 220V, charge time is 4-6 hours. Fast charging will provide 80% of pack capacity in 30 minutes.

- from greencarcongress. 19 Feb 2009

Agents of change

People have made the point that the Obama house is flush with Clintonites, all of these people that we knew in the 1990s. Some people who were senior advisers to Hillary Clinton jumped onto the Obama bandwagon after Hillary conceded defeat. But what’s important to remember is what 1990s foreign policy looked like, because while Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to bring change, if you actually analyze US foreign policy from George H.W. Bush through Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, there are great consistencies.

Bill Clinton’s policies, his foreign policies in the 1990s, really laid the groundwork for much of what President Bush did when he was in office. You had the Iraq Liberation Act, which was passed in 1998, which was the result of a collusion between neoliberal Democrats, neoconservative Republicans. That made regime change in Iraq mandatory. Clinton mercilessly punished the people of Iraq through economic sanctions, the longest sustained bombing campaign since Vietnam. They dismantled Yugoslavia, bombed it. They implemented policies such as the Rambouillet Accord against Milosevic, that was essentially a setup to take away Yugoslavia’s sovereignty, very similar to what Bush did in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. Clinton hit Sudan. He hit Afghanistan. His free trade globalization policies devastated economies around the world and working people.

Many of the architects of those policies in the 1990s were not only people who supported the Iraq war in the lead-up and promoted the myth that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, but they are now at the center of the Obama foreign policy team.

Joe Biden’s selection as the vice-presidential candidate was a clear indication that the old guard Democrats were going to be securely embedded in the Obama White House. One of the experiences in Biden’s life bears particular mention, and that is that Biden was the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the summer of 2002, when the Iraq war was being debated. Joe Biden was the man in charge of framing the so-called debate, and he refused to call two witnesses, in particular, who would have thoroughly debunked all of the lies that were being told. One is the former chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter. The other is the former head of the UN program in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck. The reason we wanted von Sponeck there is because he had just come back from the north of Iraq and had observed Ansar al-Islam guerrillas, the so-called al-Qaeda presence in Iraq, and would have testified that in fact they were not being trained by Saddam’s government, that they were receiving no assistance, that in fact they were fighting Saddam’s government and were operating from the US-enforced safe haven of northern Iraq, or Iraqi Kurdistan.

Rahm Emanuel, a hardliner on Israel, of course, also one of the key people in the passage of NAFTA and someone who’s called for a dramatic expansion of the US military.

Madeleine Albright, one of the deans of the Democratic policy elite, whether she gets a post or not in the Obama administration, many of her proteges are some of the key people operating now in the Obama team.

Richard Holbrooke, who of course was one of the point people in the genocide in East Timor under the Carter administration, who also was one of the key figures in dismantling of Yugoslavia and also promoted the myth that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and, in fact, praised Colin Powell’s fraudulent testimony before the United Nations, saying it was masterful diplomacy.

These are some of the key people there, including Tony Lake. The former National Security Adviser, deeply responsible for the destruction of Haiti.

Many of these people, at the top of the list, you have Dennis Ross, who was both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton’s Middle East envoy, and Martin Indyk. Both of them work very closely with AIPAC, as well as the Project for a New American Century.

Michele Flournoy is one of the people that, down the line, may be tapped as the first female Defense secretary, also working with the Project for a New American Century, and in fact authored a paper that is said to have reframed Obama’s perspective on Iraq, backing him off of the total withdrawal rhetoric and looking more at a sort of residual force, downsized, rebranded occupation.

Sarah Sewall, who comes from the Carr Center at Harvard, we have to remember that Sarah Sewall is someone who has collaborated with General David Petraeus in rebranding American counterinsurgency doctrine. She wrote the introduction to the US Army Field Manual’s republication of the US Army Counterinsurgency Manual. This is a manual that is based on deception, lies, shadow warfare, paramilitary warfare. And she’s been criticized by progressives and other academics for collaborating with the military in developing how to make a better, more effective war machine that also can be spun in human rights circles as, well, softer than that of George W. Bush. Really what we’re talking about here is not just Bush-lite, but an extension of the sort of militaristic, belligerent foreign policy that has been a staple of the US machine for all of our lifetimes.

On the issue of Gitmo, Obama sends one message, but then brings on board as his intelligence transition team John Brennan, who Glenn Greenwald rightly described as an advocate of torture, someone who has passionately defended the US extraordinary rendition program, which began under President Clinton, the government-sanctioned kidnap-and-torture program; Jami Miscik, as well, another person who has spoken out in favor of these harsh interrogation tactics, as they’re called. So you have the stated policy, and then you have the people and their track records. And history is—best qualifies us to, speak about what’s actually going to happen.

But while he does call for shutting down Guantanamo, there are very hawkish components to the Obama plan. He has credited himself with calling for a surge in Afghanistan and saying that President Bush and John McCain followed his lead. He believes in a paramilitarization of the war on drugs in Central and Latin America. He is not going to shut down these private contractors that have made these offensive wars of aggression possible. His Iraq plan is a downsized, rebranded version of the Bush plan, through his residual force operations.

And then the position that he laid out at AIPAC, where he talked about Jerusalem must remain undivided, that was a speech that was crafted by well-known neoconservatives, and it was messaging to the very right-wing Jewish community in the United States as a way of saying that Obama was going to be pro-Israel. He went further, in fact, than President Bush. he said, well, the US embassy should be in Jerusalem. All the candidates say that, but then saying that Jerusalem must remain—must be undivided, that was further than a lot of Republicans are willing to take it.

we’re talking about heavy hitters who, whether they hold posts or not, are going to have great sway over Barack Obama. And that we have to remember, when Clinton first took office, there was not the identical euphoria, but people were glad that Bush was no longer in office, and Clinton turned out to be one of the greatest Republican presidents in history, really setting—co-opting the Republican agenda at times and making possible many of the policies Bush implemented.

A sort of disturbing trend is that we have sort of blue-state Fox emerging, where people are, sort of treating Obama in a different way than they would treat Bush or anyone else in power. When Bush first took power, there was a tremendous outcry over all of these old Reagan hands that were being brought back in and the neoconservatives and others.

The time is now to call the question on the involvement of some of these people, that this is the precise moment when this kind of journalism matters, when we have to remind people of the history and the previous policies implemented by the people that are at the center of Obama’s foreign policy team right now, because we’re going to be living with these people for the next four years running the show. And it’s incredibly important to be all over this right now, before they’re named.

You have over 120 members of the House of Representatives who had the foresight to actually vote against the war, and you had twenty-three US senators who voted against the war. And you have Russ Feingold, who voted against the USA PATRIOT Act. And you have former CIA analysts, like Mel Goodman and Ray McGovern, who should be consulted and asked who they think should be running Central Intelligence and be the director of National Intelligence. Almost all these people have been on the show. The Obama campaign should look back at Democracy Now!’s archives to find all of these people who were very credible, who actually have been right about US foreign policy—bring them into the fold.

Discussion: Jeremy Scahill, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez.

Jeremy Scahill, award-winning investigative journalist, Democracy Now! correspondent, and author of the international bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His latest article was just published on AlterNet.org. It’s called “This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House“.

- from democracynow. 20 Nov 2008.

This is the old show. How many of these people are now on power?

Decommissioning Chapelcross nuclear plant

Work is getting under way on removing more than 38,000 spent uranium fuel rods from a former nuclear plant in southern Scotland. It is the latest step in the £800m decommissioning process at the Chapelcross site near Annan.

It is five years since it ceased energy production and almost two years since its cooling towers were demolished. The fuel will be extracted over the next three years and taken by road to Sellafield in Cumbria for reprocessing.

A total of 269 loads will leave Chapelcross between the beginning of March and the end of 2011.

The Chapelcross nuclear plant was built in 1959 and ceased generation in 2004.

In 2007, its landmark cooling towers were demolished and last year formal permission was received to start the lengthy process of defuelling its four reactors.

- from bbc. 17 Feb 2009

See how nuclear waste is dumped

An anti-nuclear group has warned west Cumbrians: “Be afraid, very afraid” after bosses at the Drigg waste dump admitted they don’t know what’s buried there.

Management at the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR), near Sellafield, have placed newspaper adverts appealing for ex-employees who worked at the site in 1960s, 70s and 80s to come forward.

The aim is to build up a picture of what was stored there and how it was buried. Drigg bosses say the vast majority of material is accounted for.

But Martin Forwood, spokesman for Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core), said the admission should send shockwaves through the local community. He added: “Be afraid, very afraid.

“If they can’t even account for the lower category of radioactive wastes, what hope is there for the volumes of significantly more dangerous intermediate and high level wastes they now so desperately want to dump deep underground somewhere in the UK?

“(The) advert implores workers who tipped nuclear waste into the site’s open trenches over a 25-year period from 1960 to try and remember exactly what it was they dumped.

“Given that the trenches have now been capped and sealed off for some years, those workers still alive will be hard pushed to recall exactly what they were chucking away up to fifty years ago.”

Core claims to have information that higher category waste is stored at Drigg including debris from the US Three Mile Island reactor accident and from Chernobyl.

London-based environment consultancy EBM Consultants has been employed to carry out the Drigg study.

EBM managing director Katherine Robinson said: “It’s what is in the trenches we are particularly interested in.”

- from whitehaven-news, greenpeace. 18 Feb 2009

So careless !
If this is the case of a developed country, what about the third world countries like India

What Next? The Elections, the Economy, and the World

Noam Chomsky discussed the meaning of President-Elect Barack Obama’s victory and the possibilities ahead for real democratic change at a speech last week in Boston at an event organized by “Encuentro 5.”.

Well, let’s begin with the elections. The word that the rolls off of everyone’s tongue is historic. Historic election. And I agree with it. It was a historic election. To have a black family in the white house is a momentous achievement. In fact, it’s historic in a broader sense. The two Democratic candidates were an African-American and a woman. Both remarkable achievements. We go back say 40 years, it would have been unthinkable. So something’s happened to the country in 40 years. And what’s happened to the country- which is we’re not supposed to mention- is that there was extensive and very constructive activism in the 1960s, which had an aftermath. So the feminist movement, mostly developed in the 70s-–the solidarity movements of the 80’s and on till today. And the activism did civilize the country. The country’s a lot more civilized than it was 40 years ago and the historic achievements illustrate it. That’s also a lesson for what’s next.

What’s next will depend on whether the same thing happens. Changes and progress very rarely are gifts from above. They come out of struggles from below. And the answer to what’s next depends on people like you. Nobody else can answer it. It’s not predictable. In some ways, the election—the election was surprising in some respects.

Going back to my bad prediction, If the financial crisis hadn’t taken place at the moment that it did, if it had been delayed a couple of months, I suspect that prediction would have been correct. But not speculating, one thing surprising about the election was that it wasn’t a landslide.
bq. By the usual criteria, you would expect the opposition party to win in a landslide under conditions like the ones that exist today. The incumbent president for eight years was so unpopular that his own party couldn’t mention his name and had to pretend to be opposing his policies. He presided over the worst record for ordinary people in post-war history, in terms of job growth, real wealth and so on. Just about everything the administration was touched just turned into a disaster. [The] country has reached the lowest level of standing in the world that it’s ever had. The economy was tanking. Several recessions are going on. Not just the ones on the front pages, the financial recession. There’s also a recession in the real economy. The productive economy, under circumstances and people know it. So 80% of the population say that the country’s going in the wrong direction. About 80% say the government doesn’t work to the benefit of the people, it works for the few and the special interests. A startling 94% complain that the government doesn’t pay any attention to the public will, and on like that. Under conditions like that, you would expect a landslide to a opposition almost whoever they are. And there wasn’t one.

So one might ask why wasn’t there a landslide? That goes off in an interesting direction. And other respects the outcome was pretty familiar. So once again, the election was essentially bought. 9 out of 10 of the victors outspent their opponents. Obama of course outspent McCain. If you look at the—and we don’t have final records yet from the final results, but they’re probably going to be pretty much like the preliminaries a couple of months ago. Which showed that both Obama and McCain were getting the bulk of their financing from the financial institutions and for Obama, law firms which means essentially lobbyists. That was about over a third a few months ago. But the final results will probably be the same. And there is a—the distribution of funding has over time been a pretty good predictor of what policies will be like for those of you who are interested, there’s very good scholarly work on this by Tom Ferguson in Umass Boston, what he calls the investment theory of politics. Which argues essentially that elections are moments when groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state and has quite the substantial predictive success. Gives some suggestion as to what’s likely to happen. So that part’s familiar. The—what the future is as I say, depends on people like you.

The response for the election was interesting and instructive. It kept pretty much to the soaring rhetoric, to borrow the cliché, that was the major theme of the election. The election was described as an extraordinary display of democracy, a miracle that could only happen in America and on and on. Much more extreme than Europe even than here. There’s some accuracy in that if we keep to the West. So if we keep to the West, yes, it’s probably true. That couldn’t have happened anywhere else. Europe was much more racist than the United States and you wouldn’t expect anything like that to happen.

On the other hand, if you look at the world, it’s not that remarkable. So let’s take the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere. Haiti and Bolivia. In Haiti, there was an election in 1990 which really was an extraordinary display of democracy much more so than this.

In Haiti, there were grassroots movements, popular movements that developed in the slums and the hills, which nobody was paying any attention to. And they managed, even without any resources, to sweep into power their own candidate. A populist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That’s a victory for democracy when popular movements can organize and set programs and pick their candidate and put them into office, which is not what happened here, of course.

I mean, Obama did organize a large number of people and many enthusiastic people in what’s called in the press, Obama’s Army. But the army is supposed to take instructions, not to implement, introduce, develop programs and call on its own candidate to implement them. That’s critical. If the army keeps to that condition, nothing much will change. If it on the other hand goes away activists did in the sixties, a lot can change. That’s one of the choices that has to be made. That’s Haiti. Of course that didn’t last very long. A couple of months later, there was military coup, a period of terror, we won’t go through the whole record. Up the present, the traditional torturers of Haiti, France, and the United States have made sure that there won’t be a victory for democracy there. It’s a miserable story. Contrary to many illusions.

Take the second poorest country, Bolivia. They had an election in 2005 that’s almost unimaginable in the West. Certainly here, anywhere. The person elected into office was indigenous. That’s the most oppressed population in the hemisphere, those who survived. He’s is a poor peasant. How did he get in? Well, he got in because there were again, a mass popular movement, which elected their own representative. And they are the source of the programs, which are serious ones. There’s real issues, And people know them. Control over resources, cultural rights, social justice and so on.

Furthermore, the election was just an event that was particular stage in a long continuing struggle, a lot before and a lot after. There was day when people pushed the levers but that’s just an event in ongoing popular struggles, very serious ones. A couple of years ago, there was a major struggle over privatization of water. An effort which it would in effect deprive a good part of the population of water to drink. And it was a bitter struggle. A lot of people were killed, but they won it. Through international solidarity, in fact, which helped. And it continues. Now that’s a real election. Again, the plans, the programs are being developed, acted on constantly by mass popular movements, which then select their own representatives from their own ranks to carry out their programs. And that’s quite different from what happened here.

Actually what happened here is understood by elite elements. The public relations industry which runs elections here-quadrennial extravaganzas essentially- makes sure to keep issues in the margins and focus on personalities and character and so on–and-so forth. They do that for good reasons. They know- they look at public opinion studies and they know perfectly well that on a host of major issues both parties are well to the right of the population. That’s one good reason to keep issues off the table. And they recognize the success.

So, every year, the advertising industry gives a prize to, you know, to the best marketing campaign of the year. This year, Obama won the prize. Beat out Apple company. The best marketing campaign of 2008. Which is correct, it is essentially what happened. Now that’s quite different from what happens in a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or Haiti, except for the fact that it was crushed. And in the South, it’s not all that uncommon. Notice that each of these cases, there’s a much more extraordinary display of democracy in action than what we’ve seen–important as it was-here. And so the rhetoric, especially in Europe is correct if we maintain our own narrow racist perspective and say yeah, what happened was in the South didn’t happen or doesn’t matter. The only matters is what we do and by our standards, it was extraordinary miracle, but not by the standards of functioning democracy. In fact, there’s a distinction in democratic theory, which does separate say the United States from Bolivia or Haiti.

Question is what is a democracy supposed to be? That’s exactly a debate that goes back to the constitutional convention. But in recent years in the 20th century, it’s been pretty well articulated by important figures. So at the liberal end the progressive end, the leading public intellectual of the 20th century was Walter Lippman. A Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy progressive. And a lot of his work was on a democratic theory and he was pretty frank about it. If you took a position not all that different from James Madison’s. He said that in a democracy, the population has a function. Its function is to be spectators, not participants. He didn’t call it the population. He called it the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. The ignorant and meddlesome outsiders have a function and namely to watch what’s going on. And to push a lever every once in a while and then go home. But, the participants are us, us privileged, smart guys. Well that’s one conception of democracy. And you know essentially we’ve seen an episode of it. The population very often doesn’t accept this. As I mentioned, just very recent polls, people overwhelmingly oppose it. But they’re atomized, separated. Many of them feel hopeless, unorganized, and don’t feel they can do anything about it. So they dislike it. But that’s where it ends.

In a functioning democracy like say Bolivia or the United States in earlier stages, they did something about it. That’s why we have the New Deal measures, the Great Society measures. In fact just about any step, you know, women’s rights, end of slavery, go back as far as you like, it doesn’t happen as a gift. And it’s not going to happen in the future. The commentators are pretty well aware of this. They don’t put it the way I’m going to, but if you read the press, it does come out. So take our local newspaper at the liberal end of the spectrum, “Boston Globe,” you probably saw right after the election, a front page story, the lead front page story was on how Obama developed this wonderful grassroots army but he doesn’t have any debts. Which supposed to be a good thing. So he’s free to do what he likes. Because he has no debts, the normal democratic constituency, labor, women, minorities and so on, they didn’t bring him into office. So he owes them nothing

What he had was an army that he organized of people who got out the vote for Obama. For what the press calls, Brand Obama. They essentially agree with the advertisers, it’s brand Obama. That his army was mobilized to bring him to office. They regard that as a good thing, accepting the Lippman conception of democracy, the ignorant and meddlesome outsiders are supposed to do what they’re told and then go home. The Wall Street Journal, at the opposite end of the spectrum, also had an article about the same thing at roughly the same time. Talked about the tremendous grassroots army that has been developed, which is now waiting for instructions. What should they do next to press forward Obama’s agenda? Whatever that is. But whatever it is, the army’s supposed to be out there taking instructions, and press work. Los Angeles Times had similar articles, and there are others. What they don’t seem to realize is what they’re describing, the ideal of what they’re describing, is dictatorship, not democracy. Democracy, at least not in the Lippman sense, it proved- I pick him out because he’s so famous, but it’s a standard position. But in the sense of say, much of the south, where mass popular movements developed programs; organize to take part in elections but that’s one part of an ongoing process. And brings somebody from their own ranks to implement the programs that they develop, and if the person doesn’t they’re out. Ok, that’s another kind of democracy. So it’s up to us to choose which kind of democracy we want. And again, that will determine what comes next.

Well, what can we anticipate if the popular army, the grassroots army, decides to accept the function of spectators of action rather than participants? There’s two kinds of evidence. There’s rhetoric and there’s action. The rhetoric, you know, is very uplifting: change, hope, and so on. Change was kind of reflective any party manager this year who read the polls, including the ones I cited, would instantly conclude that our theme in the election has to be change. Because people hate what’s going on for good reasons. So the theme is change. In fact, both parties put both of them, the theme was change. So the theme is change. In fact both parties, both of them the theme was change. You know, break from the past, none of old politics, new things are going to happen. The Obama campaign did better so they won the marketing award, not the McCain campaign.

And notice incidentally on the side that the institutions that run the elections, public relations industry, advertisers, they have a role—their major role is commercial advertising. I mean, selling a candidate is kind of a side rule. In commercial advertising as everybody knows, everybody who has ever looked at a television program, the advertising is not intended to provide information about the product, all right? I don’t have to go on about that. It’s obvious. The point of the advertising is to delude people with the imagery and, you know, tales of a football player, sexy actress, who you know, drives to the moon in a car or something like that. But, that’s certainly not to inform people. In fact, it’s to keep people uninformed.

The goal of advertising is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices. Those of you who suffered through an economics course know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. But industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year to undermine markets and to ensure, you know, to get uninformed consumers making irrational choices.

And when they turn to selling a candidate they do the same thing. They want uninformed consumers, you know, uninformed voters to make irrational choices based on the success of illusion, slander, and effective body language or whatever else is supposed to be significant. So you undermine democracy pretty much the same way you undermine markets. Well, that’s the nature of an election when it’s run by the business world, and you’d expect it to be like that. There should be no surprise there. And it should also turn out the elected candidate didn’t have any debts. So you can follow Brand Obama can be whatever they decide it to be, not what the population decides that it should be, as in the south, let’s say. I’m going to say on the side, this may be an actual instance of a familiar and unusually vacuous slogan about the clash of civilization. Maybe there really is one, but not the kind that’s usually touted.

So let’s go back to the evidence that we have, rhetoric and actions. Rhetoric we know, but what are the actions? So far the major actions are selections, in fact the only action, of personnel to implement Brand Obama. The first choice was the Vice President, Joe Biden, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq in the Senate, a long time Washington insider rarely deviates from the party vote. In cases where he does deviate they’re not very uplifting. He did break from the party and voting for a Senate resolution that prevented people from getting rid of their debts by, individuals, that is, from getting rid of their debts by going into bankruptcy. It’s a blow against poor people who’ve caught in this immense debt that’s a large part of the basis for the economy these days. But usually, he’s a, kind of, straight party-liner with the democrats on the sort of ultra naturalist side. The choice of Biden was a, must have been a conscious attempt to show contempt for the base of people who were voting for Obama, or organizing for him as an anti-war candidate.

Well, the first post-election appointment was for Chief of Staff, which is a crucial appointment; determines a large part of the president’s agenda. That was Rahm Emanuel, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq in the House. In fact, he was the only member of the Illinois delegation who voted for Bush’s effective declaration of war. And, again, a longtime Washington insider. Also, one of the leading recipients in congress of funding from the financial institutions hedge funds and so on. He himself was an investment banker. That’s his background. So, that’s the Chief of Staff.

The next group of appointments were the main problem, the primary issue that the governments’ going to have to face is what to do about the financial crisis. Obama’s choices to more or less run this were Robert Rubin and Larry Summers from the Clinton–Secretaries of Treasury under Clinton. They are among the people who are substantially responsible for the crisis. One leading economist, one of the few economists who has been right all along in predicting what’s happening, Dean Baker, pointed out that selecting them is like selecting Osama Bin Laden to run the war on terror.

Yeah, I’ll finish. This saves me the problem of what’s coming next, so I’ll finish with the elections. Let me make one final comment on this. There was meeting on November 7, I think of a group of couple, of a dozen advisers to deal with the financial crisis. Their careers were, records were reviewed in the business press, and Bloomberg News had an article reviewing their records and concluded that these people, most of these people shouldn’t be giving advice about the economy. They should be given subpoenas.

Because most of them were involved in one or other form of financial fraud, that includes Rahm Emanuel, for example. What reason is there to think that the people who brought this crisis about are some how going to fix it? Well, that’s a good indication of what’s likely to come next, at least if we look at actions. We couldn’t, but it won’t. You can bring this up. Ask what we expect to see in particular cases. And there’s evidence about that from statements from Obama’s website. I’ll mention just one thing about Obama’s website, which gives an indication of what’s happening. One of the major problems coming is Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s pretty serious. Take a look at Obama’s website under issues, foreign policy issues. The names don’t even appear. I mean, we’re supposed to be ignorant and meddlesome outsiders. We’re not supposed to know what Brand Obama is. So you can’t find out that way. The statements that you hear are pretty hawkish. And it doesn’t change much as you go through the list. I’ll wrap up here. So it’s up to you to continue.

- from democracynow. 24 Nov 2008

Joke about a reprocessing

Sellafield - the site may provide storage for 100 tonnes of radioactive plutonium if the reprocessing facility is closed. Photograph Alamy

One of the great white elephants of Britain’s atomic industry looks set for closure, according to documents published by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The NDA is examining the closure of Sellafield’s troubled “mixed oxide” or Mox production plant, which has performed badly since it was opened 10 years ago.

The demise of the long-troubled Sellafield Mox plant (SMP) would be an embarrassment for ministers at a time when they are trying to persuade sceptics that a new generation of atomic plants can delivered on time and on budget.

The plant’s closure would make it more likely that a 100-tonne stockpile of highly radioactive plutonium will be stored until the wider Sellafield site in Cumbria is shut, down, rather than turned into new fuel, say industry figures. The Mox plant was set up to manufacture new fuel from recycled plutonium and uranium on site.

The death knell for the reprocessing facility is effectively delivered in the NDA’s just-published Plutonium Topic Strategy, which says: “NDA have reviewed SMP and do not believe that it provides either the capacity or longevity to be used for the UK civil stockpile and the recycle options that NDA has considered [assuming] that plutonium is either sold direct or that Mox [mixed oxide] is fabricated in a new plant. There may be an opportunity to utilise the [existing] plant in a meaningful manner for the low specification Mox option.”

The NDA declined to comment, insisting it had yet to decide on a formal recommendation and pointing out that the final decision would be taken by ministers.

But the wording of the technical review of the SMP makes clear it is close to dead, and well placed industry sources said there was little chance it would stay open, believing the reference to a “low-specification” role was merely cosmetic.

The plant cost £470m to build but, with the construction costs written off, it was assessed by government-appointed consultants in 2001 to have a net positive value of only £216m – and this was partly based on winning back Japanese business, which proved hard after the falsification of quality-assurance data in 1999.

Green groups opposed the facility as uneconomic when it was proposed in the late 1990s. But it was given the go-ahead by ministers on the basis that it would reprocess 120 tonnes of fuel a year for use in Britain and abroad.

It has suffered repeated breakdowns and, last spring, the then energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, admitted in response to a parliamentary question that SMP had managed to reprocess only 2.6 tonnes of fuel per year between 2002 and 2007.

Between 1998 and 2002, the plant produced annual figures respectively of 2.3 tonnes, 0.3 tonnes, 0 tonnes and 0 tonnes following a string of technical difficulties. Wicks said it was using “largely unproven technology” and admitted that even when it operated at top capacity it could produce only 72 tonnes a year by 2001.

The SMP was designed to make new fuel from the recycled uranium and plutonium recovered from used nuclear fuel, which had been reprocessed by the nearby thermal oxide reprocessing plant (Thorp) at Sellafield. A Mox demonstration complex was opened in 1998, but was hit by a scandal involving quality control and the falsification of documents, which led to the resignation of John Taylor, chief executive of BNFL.

Attempts to open the main SMP facility led to high court challenges by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, which argued that the government’s decision to allow BNFL to proceed was unlawful under European law. The Irish government also took unsuccessful legal action to stop the SMP opening over concerns about radioactive effluent polluting the Irish sea.

Jean McSorley, a nuclear campaigner at Greenpeace, said last night that the SMP plant, along with the troubled Thorp facility, was a dramatic failure. “It just shows the differences between the claims and realities of the nuclear industry, but my fear is they could instead opt to import technology from France [for a new Mox plant], and that also should be avoided,” she said.

- from guardian. 17 Feb 2009

How to be as persuasive as Abraham Lincoln

Part 1: Study the figures of speech and Shakespeare

In a famous 1858 speech, Lincoln paraphrased Jesus, saying “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” and he extended the house metaphor throughout the speech. His law partner, William Herndon, later wrote that Lincoln had told him he wanted to use “some universally known figure [of speech] expressed in simple language … that may strike home to the minds of men in order to raise them up to the peril of the times.”

Elizabethans like Shakespeare learned the figures the hard way. William likely attended the town grammar school from age seven to at least age thirteen. Grammar schools got their name because they taught grammar–Latin grammar. The schooling was intensive: ten hours a day, six days a week, thirty-six weeks a year.

The amount of repetition was staggering: Every single hour of instruction required, according to one sixteenth-century schoolmaster, six or more hours of exercises to apply the lesson to both speaking and writing. Much of the curriculum was rhetoric since the Elizabethans saw eloquence as the greatest skill to be acquired and rhetoric as the key to the Bible and literature. The teaching strategy was systematic: “First learn the figures, secondly identify them in whatever you read, thirdly use them yourself.” Hour after hour after hour, identifying every figure in Ovid or Cicero, then creating your own versions.

How did students respond to such rigorous teaching? C. S. Lewis says we must imagine the following mindset of would-be Elizabethan poets: “Your father, your grown-up brother, your admired elder school fellow all loved rhetoric. Therefore you loved it, too. You adored sweet Tully [Marcus Tullius Cicero] and were as concerned about asyndeton and chiasmus [figures of speech] as a modern schoolboy is about county cricketers or types of aeroplanes.”

Nineteenth-century America lacked the rigorous teaching of the rhetoric of Shakespeare’s day, but orators were widely admired, entertaining large audiences–and larger readerships–with speeches that lasted over two hours and that might be printed in a local newspaper, the text often filling the entire front page. This was the golden age of American oratory, the age of Daniel Webster, of Henry Clay, of Stephen Douglas, and of Abraham Lincoln.

In modern times, with multiple media to entertain ourselves with–television, movies, radio, the Internet, video games, iPods–we can hardly imagine what it was like to live at a time when public speeches and debates were a primary form of entertainment. One 1858 audience, after sitting through three hours of Lincoln and Douglas debating, actually went out to hear another speech. Lincoln himself, after his first debate with Douglas that year, headed off to hear another speech.

Lincoln, a master orator, debater, and rhetorician, was the most consciously rhetorical of our presidents. He once incisively attacked an opponent for employing a particular metaphor–using a metaphor of his own: “I wish gentlemen on the other side to understand that the use of degrading figures [of speech] is a game at which they may not find themselves able to take all the winnings.”

In Lincoln’s day, aspiring preachers, lawyers, and politicians were taught some rhetoric in college, though they would have learned much just from their study of the Bible. Lincoln worked hard to teach himself elocution and grammar.

Lincoln studied the great speechmakers of his time, like Daniel Webster, as well the great Elizabethan speechmaker. At an early age, he appears to have studied William Scott’s Lessons in Elocution, which ends with forty-nine speeches from life and art, nineteen from Shakespeare, including a number that he memorized, such as the soliloquy by King Claudius on the guilt he feels for having murdered Hamlet’s father. At the age of twenty-three, Lincoln walked six miles to get a copy of Samuel Kirkham’s English Grammar, which ends with a several-page discussion of the figures of speech.

Lincoln continued his passion for poetry and Shakespeare throughout his entire life. He spent hours reading passages from Shakespeare to his personal secretary John Hay and the artist F. B. Carpenter. After seeing one performance of Henry IV Part One, Lincoln debated Hay on the meaning and emphasis of a single phrase of Falstaff’s. During the painting of “Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation,” Carpenter describes Lincoln reciting Claudius’s 36-line speech in Hamlet “from memory, with a feeling and appreciation unsurpassed by anything I ever witnessed upon the stage.”

The one figure of speech discussed in both Kirkham’s book (briefly) and Scott’s book (with three full pages of examples) is antithesis–placing words or ideas in contrast or opposition, such as Lord Chesterfield’s quip, “The manner of speaking is as important as the matter,” or Shakespeare’s

Cowards die many times before their deaths,
The valiant never taste of death but once.”

This became one of Lincoln’s favorite figures, in unforgettable lines such as “the world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here” and “with malice toward none; with charity for all.”

- from climateprogress. 16 Feb 2009.

British Royal Mail

This 1899 British Royal Mail delivery van was built by Daimler and powered entirely by batteries, proving a good idea is timeless.

- from evworld

Increasing number of cars in china

China’s capital has added nearly 1,500 new cars to its notoriously congested roads each day so far this year, state media said on Tuesday, despite a nationwide fall in car sales and efforts to cut traffic.

Beijing registered 65,970 new vehicles in the first 45 days of the year, or a daily increase of 1,466, Xinhua news agency said.

China has introduced incentives to try to boost domestic demand but official data shows car sales in January fell 7.76 percent from a year earlier as traditionally roaring economic growth slowed.

Beijing has also introduced rules aimed at taking a fifth of private cars off the road each day, according to license plate numbers, to ease congestion and pollution.

China’s roads have long been among the most dangerous in the world due to overloaded and speeding trucks and drivers who switch lanes without signaling and often ignore traffic lights.

China recorded 5.1 road accident deaths for every 10,000 motor vehicles in 2007, the highest rate in the world, Xinhua reported earlier.

- from reuters. 17 Feb 2009.

Please dont buy cars. Use public transport as much as possible. Use electric vehicles.

Denier’s talk. Why scientists fail in public debate

In 2007, NPR broadcast a now-infamous climate debate on the proposition “Global warming is not a crisis.”

scientists are lousy at rhetoric, the art of persuasion.

Significantly, rhetoric, was discovered and developed by the Greeks and Romans in part to help them win debates, so it follows that modern debates are also won by those who are better at using the strategies and tactics of rhetoric. In his dialogue Gorgias about the master rhetorician, Plato gives him a speech that dramatizes the awesome power of rhetoric:

If a rhetorician and a doctor visited any city you like to name and they had to contend in argument before the Assembly or any other gathering as to which of the two should be chosen as doctor, the doctor would be nowhere, but the man who could speak would be chosen, if he so wished.

So a rhetorician could persuade any audience, no matter how intelligent, that he or she was more of a doctor than a real doctor. No surprise, then, that someone skilled in rhetoric can beat a scientist in a debate on climate.

The 2007 debate had, “speaking for the motion: Michael Crichton, Richard S. Lindzen, Philip Stott” and “speaking against the motion: Brenda Ekwurzel, Gavin Schmidt, Richard C.J. Somerville”

Stott spends a considerable amount of time pushing the favorite denier narrative that just a few decades ago, scientists believed the climate was cooling but now they believe it’s warming. I will explain below why someone who has spent 10 years using “modern techniques of deconstruction to grand environmental narratives, like global warming,” would devote so much time to repeating such a long-debunked myth.

Even more fascinating is the opening statement from the one non-scientist in the debate, Crichton, who has obviously become very rich precisely because he knows how to put together (fictional) narratives that are compelling to millions of people. He adopts the classic everyman position that is classic old-school rhetoric:

I myself, uh, just a few years ago, held the kinds of views that I, uh, expect most of you in this room hold. That’s to say, I had a very conventional view about the environment. I thought it was going to hell. I thought human beings were responsible and I thought we had to do something about it. I hadn’t actually looked at any environmental issues in detail but I have that general view. And so in 2000, when I read an article that suggested that the evidence for global warming might not be quite as firm as people said, I immediately dismissed it. Not believe in global warming? That’s ridiculous. How could you have such an idea? Are you going to try and tell me that the planet isn’t getting warmer? I know it’s getting warmer…. I spent thirty years in California. We used to have something called June gloom. Now it’s more like May, June, July, August gloom with September, October, November gloom added in. The weather is very different.

However, because I look for trouble, um, I went at a certain point and started looking at the temperature records. And I was very surprised at what I found. The first thing that I discovered, which Dick has already told you, is that the increase in temperatures so far over the last hundred years, is on the order of six-tenths of a degree Celsius, about a degree Fahrenheit. I hadn’t really thought, when we talked about global warming, about how much global warming really was taking place…

Crichton is identifying himself with the audience — he once believe like they did, but then, gosh darn it, he went looking for trouble and found the actual data. This rhetorical strategy, and Stott’s, is not just decades old, not just centuries old, it is literally millennia old.

Scientists and progressives and Democratic politicians have historically lost debates because they made two fundamental mistakes: First, they have treated the debates as if they were high school or college debates, which are won primarily on the merits of the arguments and volume of evidence presented.

Second, relatedly, they seem to think that appearing smarter than your opponent is a winning strategy, whereas conservatives understand and have repeatedly demonstrated it is a losing strategy. This fact was very well understood by the masters of persuasive language from ancient Greece and Rome through Elizabethans like Shakespeare and by skilled debaters like Lincoln and Churchill, as we will see.

Debates are typically won by the candidate who presents the most compelling and persuasive character. If I can convince you I’m an honest, straight talker, you’ll believe what else I say. If can’t, you won’t.

Debates are not usually won on factual or policy merits, in part because listeners aren’t in a position to adjudicate sometimes subtle differences between complex positions — what exactly was the difference between Clinton’s health care plan and Obama’s? and what exactly is the difference between carbon dioxide emissions and carbon dioxide concentrations? — and because those who are undecided on an issue are typically skeptical of all advocates, especially self-style “experts.” They assume everybody exaggerates to defend their position. In any case, if I don’t convince you I’m honest, my stated positions can’t possibly matter.

A HISTORY OF FAKING STRAIGHT TALK

A core strategy of rhetoric is to avoid seeming like a smarty-pants, to avoid appearing like a highly educated (i.e. elite), wonkish speaker, but rather a plainspoken man of the people.

Shakespeare — a master of rhetoric who knew more than 200 figures of speech like all middle-class Elizabethans — understood that very well. That’s why he has Mark Antony say in one of the great debate speeches of all time, his famous “Friends, Romans, countrymen” response to Brutus in the Roman Forum: “I am no orator, as Brutus is, But–as you know me all–a plain blunt man.”

Is it coincidental that the only ones to use the word “rhetoric” in the 2004 presidential debates were George Bush and Dick Cheney? In the Vice Presidential Debate, Cheney said to his Democratic rival, Senator John Edwards, “Your rhetoric, Senator, would be a lot more credible if there was a record to back it up.” In the final debate, Bush twice repeated almost verbatim the same accusation about Kerry: “His rhetoric doesn’t match his record,” and again “His record in the United States Senate does not match his rhetoric.” This was only a small salvo in the Bush team’s war on Kerry’s language.

It is a mark of wily orators that they accuse their opponents of being rhetoricians. Winston Churchill, who wrote a treatise on the use of rhetoric in political speech at the age of 22, himself once opened an attack on his political opponents, saying “These professional intellectuals who revel in decimals and polysyllables….”

Returning to the Roman Forum, Marc Antony says

For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,
Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech,
To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on;
I tell you that which you yourselves do know;

So Antony is a man of the people, just reminding them of what they already know. Antony was, in fact, a patrician, like Bush. Indeed, Antony was a student of rhetoric, but his repeated use of one-syllable words lends credibility to his blunt sincerity. It is a mark of first-rate orators that they deny eloquence.

Lincoln was a “plain homespun” speaker, or so goes the legend, a legend he himself worked hard to create. In a December 1859 autobiographical sketch provided to a Pennsylvania newspaper, Lincoln explained how his father grew up “literally without education.” Lincoln described growing up in “a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods…. There were some schools, so called.” He offers one especially colorful spin: “If a stranger supposed to understand Latin, happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard.” No fancy talkers here. Lincoln modestly explains the result of the little schooling he had: “Of course when I came of age, I did not know much.” And after that, “I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.” All this from a man who in the previous year had proven himself to be one of America’s great orators in the Lincoln-Douglas debates and who during the course of his presidency would demonstrate the most sophisticated grasp of rhetoric of any U.S. President, before or since.

Lincoln opened his masterful February 1859 Cooper Union speech echoing Shakespeare’s Antony: “The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them.” (In Antony’s own words, “I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know.”) These are the words of a man who had memorized Shakespeare from William Scott’s Lessons in Elocution, a treatise that included Antony’s famous speech.

Does this sound a little familiar:

I myself, uh, just a few years ago, held the kinds of views that I, uh, expect most of you in this room hold.

If you want to switch people’s viewpoints, pretend like you once held their views. It is a twofer. First, you can pretend you’re just like one of them. Second, you draw people into the narrative, since they become intrigued about how someone who used to believe as they did now believes differently. Classic storytelling — you need to create a hook for the listener early on or they will tune out.

Returing to rhetoric, the master orator who denies eloquence was such a commonplace by the sixteenth century that Shakespeare resorted to it repeatedly. Consider his King Henry V, a master of oratory, who delivered the most famous pre-battle speech in the English-language:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother…

After the British triumph at Agincourt, King Henry V woos Katherine, the daughter of the French king. Yet, even though Kate’s hand was one of Henry’s conditions for peace, the master of rhetoric still treats us to his tricks.

When Kate says she doesn’t speak English well, Henry says he’s glad, “for, if thou couldst, thou wouldst find me such a plain king that thou wouldst think I had sold my farm to buy my crown.” He’s just like a farmer, a man of the people. He adds, “But, before God, Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation; only downright oaths, which I never use till urged, nor never break for urging.” Like Antony, he disingenuously denies eloquence. The reason orators use this trick: Being blunt and ineloquent means they must be honest and steadfast.
Here is Bush in his Orlando campaign speech on October 30, 2004:

Sometimes I’m a little too blunt-I get that from my mother. [Huge Cheers] Sometimes I mangle the English language-I get that from my dad. [Laughter and Cheers]. But you always know where I stand. You can’t say that for my opponent….

For a blunt language-mangler, that’s surprisingly old-school — very old school — rhetoric.

Henry urges Kate to “take a fellow of plain and uncoin’d constancy, for he perforce must do thee right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other places.” Because he is not a clever orator, he must be an honest and constant man. Then Henry compares himself to an imaginary rival: “For these fellows of infinite tongue, that can rhyme themselves into ladies’ favours, they do always reason themselves out again.” In short, the other guys are flip-floppers and liars. They talk smarter than I do, but that’s exactly why you can’t trust them.

This is precisely why the deniers like Stott and Crichton love to repeat the global cooling myth, love to say, as Crichton has one of his fictional environmentalists climate in State of Fear, “In the 1970’s all the climate scientists believed an ice age was coming.”

This clever and popular attack tries to make present global-warming fears seem faddish, saying current climate science is nothing more than finger-in-the-wind guessing. This attack appeals especially to conservatives who want to link their attack on climate scientists to their favorite attack against progressive presidential candidates — that they are flip-floppers. It been debunked time and time again — see “Another denier talking point — ‘global cooling’ — bites the dust” and Real Climate (here and here) or William Connolley or Skeptical Science.

Consider Bush’s stump speech in Wilmington, Ohio the day before the election, discussing his September 2003 request for $87 billion in Iraq war funding and Kerry’s vote: “And then he entered the flip-flop Hall of Fame by saying this: ‘I actually did vote for the $87 billion right before I voted against it.’ I haven’t spent a lot of time in the coffee shops around here, but I bet you a lot of people don’t talk that way.” In Burgettstown, two hours later he said, “I doubt many people in western Pennsylvania talk that way.” In Sioux City, Iowa, a few hours later, “I haven’t spent much time in the coffee shops around here, but I feel pretty comfortable in predicting that not many people talk like that in Sioux land.” And in Albuquerque, he said, “I have spent a lot of time in New Mexico, and I’ve never heard a person talk that way.”

Sarah Palin, in her stump speech, makes an almost identical criticism of Obama: “We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco.” He is not one of us. He’s two faced. Yes, it may seem laughable coming from the Palin-McCain team, but even laughable works when it uses the tools of rhetoric — Palin here is using antithesis– placing words or ideas in contrast or opposition, one of Lincoln’s favorite rhetorical devices: “with malice toward none; with charity for all.” And she is placing Obama into a very old narrative about liars, flip-floppers, and Democratic candidates for President.

Kerry’s self-defining and self-defaming quote–”I actually did vote for the $87 billion right before I voted against it.”–has the powerful elements of eloquence. Sadly for Kerry, this is the precise reason it stuck in the mind. It has the repetition and sound of two memorable figures found in famous political quotes, antithesis, (”voted for” versus “voted against”), and chiasmus, words repeated in inverse order (in this case, “I .. vote for” and “before I voted”). Little wonder it was ripe for exploitation through repetition and sarcasm.

President Bush in 2004 had everything down cold that we expect from a master rhetorician: The repeated simple words, the repeated phrases, and the message that his opponent is inconsistent and inconstant because he’s too clever by half and doesn’t talk the way you and I do. Yet at the same time, Bush managed to leave the impression that he himself is rather slow and inarticulate. Ironically, the (all-too-many) Democrats who attacked Bush as being stupid merely gave him a free pass on all his lying and made him seem more genuine and credible to many voters.

As hard as it can be sometimes it simply makes no sense whatsoever to attack your opponents as being stupid. Call them liars before calling them stupid.

Why did Kerry flip flop? Bush had a simple answer. The President told every audience that Kerry’s most revealing explanation “was when he said, the whole thing was a complicated matter. My fellow Americans, there is nothing complicated about supporting our troops in combat.” Rhetoric retains the power to move real people. In a 2005 post-election analysis, Journalism professor Danner quotes one Dr. Richardson-Pinto saying to him at Bush’s Orlando rally: “It doesn’t matter if the man [Kerry] can talk. Sometimes, when someone’s real articulate, you can’t trust what he says, you know?” And Richardson-Pinto is a doctor, someone whose credibility depends on being articulate.

So, yes, being smart, talking smart, and using big words may impress some in the audience — but most likely only those who already agree with you. It may cost you credibility with the very people you are trying to reach.

Many scientists don’t want to spend the time needed to learn how to be persuasive to nonscientists. But it is a skill that can be acquired, not really more difficult than differential equations. In any case, if you won’t spend the time, or don’t want to be known as a popularizer, then simply turn down public debates. This is not an amateur’s game. The stakes are way, way too high.

- from climateprogress. 13 Oct 2008

Los Angeles will install 140,000 LEDs

Former President Bill Clinton joined Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in unveiling what is billed as the largest effort by a U.S. city to reduce pollution by retrofitting incandescent street lights with more efficient LEDs or light emitting diodes. Over a five-year period starting in July, Los Angeles will retrofit 140,000 of its residential street lights with LEDs, officials said during City Hall news conference. The project is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 40,500 tons and save $10 million annually.

With this city’s energy usage would fall from 197 million kilowatt-hours to 132 million kilowatt-hours over the next 10 years.

- from nbclosangeles. 17 Feb 2009

“The Big Dry” And “The Big Wet”

As Australia’s record heat waves during the last week of January and first week of February overloaded urban energy, water, and transport systems in the southernmost states of South Australia and Victoria while intensifying hundreds of seasonal and man-made bushfires throughout the countryside, the northeastern state of Queensland has struggled to cope with the effects of tropical cyclones Charlotte and Ellie, which brought rain and “king tides” that have made two-thirds of that state a disaster zone, destroying livestock as well as key crops and amplifying outbreaks of disease.

As many as 260 to 300 people are feared dead from fire in Victoria, with 181 deaths confirmed. The projected deaths surpass the combined fatalities from all of Australia’s major bushfire disasters (e.g. Black Friday of 1939, Ash Wednesday of 1983) in recorded history. Full accounting of all human remains are expected to take several months.

Although flood losses are difficult to assess in Queensland, as floodwaters have not fully receded and more rain is forecast, several deaths have occurred in that state, and tens of thousands of cattle are expected to perish. Urban warnings have been issued for snakes and crocodiles, more than three hundred cases of dengue have been reported in one town alone, and some communities may be isolated by floodwaters for as long as eight weeks. Some A$500,000 in Queensland produce spoiled and had to be destroyed when flooded highways prevented trucks from reaching food distribution depots.

Australians have taken to calling the current protracted drought “The Big Dry”. Heavy annual precipitation in the North is traditionally referred to as “The Big Wet.”

Southern Cities See Record Temperatures, Little Water

Late January—already a historically dry month for the south of Australia—brought heat waves to the southern states that were unprecedented in both temperature and duration, with daily highs of more than 40 ºC (104 ºF) in Melbourne for three days in a row, peaking at 45.1 ºC (113.2 ºF) on 30 January. Buckled train tracks and sagging power lines interrupted much of the city’s passenger train service, and residents were advised to conserve water.

Although Victoria Premier John Brumby had expressed confidence in the resilience of the city’s power systems, blackouts affected as many as half a million of the city’s residents at a time. Telephone and internet services for hundreds of thousands of people were interrupted when primary, secondary, and redundant power systems failed. Record heat returned within a week, reaching 46.4 ºC (115.5 ºF) in the city on 7 February, the highest temperature recorded in Melbourne since measurements began 154 years ago.

In South Australia, Adelaide suffered five consecutive days with temperatures above 40 ºC, peaking at 45.7 ºC (114.3 ºF) on 28 January. Some parts of South Australia saw night temperatures above 41 ºC (106 ºF) before sunrise, an event that “appears to be without known precedent”, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM).

The January-February 2009 event also produced seven of the eight highest temperatures on record for the island of Tasmania, off the coast of Victoria. Temperatures at eight island sites reached or surpassed 40 °C (104 ºF), a mark which had previously been reached just sixteen times in the state’s recorded history, and only in the southeast. All eight sites that saw temperatures at or above 40 ºC this year are in the state’s northern half.

The heat waves added to existing urban water stress; Melbourne’s water supply, for example, was at a 25-year low, with reservoirs two-thirds empty prior to the heat waves, and both Melbourne and Adelaide were already operating under Stage 3 water restrictions. Victoria’s current “Target 155” water conservation program recommends a household water usage goal of no more than 155 liters (41 gallons US) of water use per person per day.

During the heat waves, however, Melbourne’s average personal daily water consumption averaged as much as 240 liters (63 gallons US) per person per day, or about 55% above target. As of 12 February, a new bushfire threatened the Yarra Valley’s Thompson Reservoir, which supplies water to the city, as well as the Longford oil and natural gas plant. Warmer weather and lightning strikes are expected in the area next week.

Australia’s cities often employ flexible water conservation goals, depending on water catchment levels that support a given city; for example, South East Queensland employed a “Target 140” campaign in 2007, when a water crisis coincided with a need to upgrade existing infrastructure. By comparison, per capita personal daily water use in the United States, excluding industry, can be as high as 400 to 600 liters (106 to 159 gallons US) per day.

As the cities sweltered, a leaked government report revealed that water flows to Australia’s Snowy River had been diverted to the Murray River by the state of New South Wales to produce power and irrigate crops, despite promises to restore the Snowy River’s natural flows beginning in 2000. Current flows are 4% of normal and 30% below agreed restoration levels. [1]

“Hell In All Its Fury Has Visited Victoria”

Most of Victoria’s worst bushfires started 7 February, with fire fronts that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd termed “hell in all its fury”, reaching as high as 35 meters (115 feet) in some areas. A University of Melbourne senior lecturer in fire ecology, Kevin Tolhurst, calculated that radiant heat from the fires would be enough to kill at distances of up to 140 meters (460 feet), with conditions similar to Dresden firestorms rapidly increasing body core temperatures and interrupting metabolic processes. Bushfires can produce their own volatile gases and oils, adding fuel to the fire.

Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology uses a Forest Fire Danger Index (FFDI) that calculates the combined effects of near-surface maximum temperature, total precipitation, relative humidity, and wind speed for a given day to determine the intensity of a blaze. A rating of 100 indicates that a fire is uncontrollable. On 7 February, the FFDI reached 400.

We’ve never seen a day like that. We have had the driest air recorded, and it was three degrees hotter than [1983’s] Ash Wednesday.
—David Jones, head of the BOM’s National Climate Centre

Much of Victoria’s rainfall has been below average for the past twelve years, and Australia has recorded a warmer than average year for the past seven years.

Impacts of Queensland Floods “Beyond Human Intervention”

Tropical cyclones Charlotte and Ellie brought heavy precipitation that stalled over Queensland rather than moving on, triggering flood warnings for the Barcoo, Burdekin, Diamantina, Georgina, Herbert, Landsborough, Murray, Thomson, and Tully rivers, Eyre Creek, and the Gulf Rivers, including the Nicholson, Flinders, Glibert, and Norman river systems.

Thousands of head of cattle were stranded across vast areas of open land by surrounding floodwaters, and emergency fodder drops were considered but ultimately deemed impractical because of the scale of the event. Queensland Cattle Council president Greg Barns judged that the floods would devastate the state’s beef industry, remarking that “the situation in many cases is really beyond human intervention.”[2] Queensland was hit hard by a 2007 deluge which was termed at the time a “one in a hundred years” event.

Role Of Climate Uncertain; Indian Ocean Dipole Remains Positive Three Years In A Row

Although scientists were careful to point out that no single heat or flood event can be conclusively tied to climate change, they warned that events such as the fires and floods of 2009 are consistent with climate models produced in the past, and are likely to be more common in the future.

In 2007, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) expressed “high confidence”—a 90% or greater likelihood—that climate change would bring greater risks to major infrastructure in Australia, with “design criteria for extreme events…very likely to be exceeded more frequently” by 2030, including more frequent heatwaves and flooding, as well as increased storm and fire damage and subsequent loss of life.[3] A report by Australia’s own Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO) in the same year found that “substantial increase in fire weather risk” likely at most sites in south-eastern Australia.[4]

One potential threat multiplier for drought and bushfires is the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), a weather phenomenon that involves the oscillation of warmer and cooler sea surface temperatures (SST) between the eastern and western Indian Ocean. Although the IOD was identified in 1999[5], fossil studies indicate that it has existed for at least 6,500 years.

The positive pole, or phase, of the IOD brings cooler and drier conditions to the eastern Indian Ocean as winds weaken, drying out southeast Australia and parts of Indonesia. At the same time, warming seas and increased precipitation occur in the western Indian Ocean, affecting monsoons in India and eastern Africa. The negative phase of the IOD flips these conditions, generating winds that pick up moisture from the western Indian Ocean, which then sweeps down towards southern Australia to deliver precipitation.

A team of scientists led by Caroline Ummenhofer and Matthew England of the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre has concluded that the Indian Ocean Dipole is the key driver of moisture-bearing winds that are carried across the southern half of Australia.[6] The team was able to establish direct links between the IOD and all of Australia’s major droughts since 1885. A report of their findings has been submitted to Geophysical Research Letters.

Although the IOD normally oscillates between positive, negative, and neutral, it has been limited to positive and neutral phases since 1992, and has remained in a positive phase for the last three years. No such occurrence can be found in previous records of sea surface temperatures. Climatologists will not know for several months whether or not the IOD will remain in a positive phase for 2009.

Firefighters Call For Halving Of Greenhouse Gases by 2020

In an open letter posted in Australia’s The Age newspaper[7][7], the United Firefighters’ Union of Australia appealed to Prime Minister Rudd and Victoria Premier John Brumby to move quickly on climate change. Research by CSIRO, the National Climate Institute, and the Bushfire Council projects that a low global warming scenario could see catastrophic fire events in parts of regional Victoria every five to seven years by 2020, increasing to every three to four years by 2050, with up to 50 per cent more extreme danger fire days.

Firefighters know that it is better to prevent an emergency than to have to rescue people from it, and we urge state and federal governments to follow scientific advice and keep firefighters and the community safe by halving the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
—Peter Marshall, National Secretary, United Firefighters’ Union of Australia

A “high global warming scenario”, however, could trigger catastrophic events as often as once a year in Mildura by 2050, extreme danger fire days in Bendigo and Canberra could double, with catastrophic events predicted as often as every eight years.

Given the Federal Government’s dismal greenhouse gas emissions cut of 5 per cent, the science suggests we are well on the way to guaranteeing that somewhere in the country there will be an almost annual repeat of the recent disaster and more frequent extreme weather events.
—Peter Marshall

Early estimates of losses from both disasters topped A$2 billion (US$1.4 billion). Late last year, re-insurer Munich Re reported that 2008 was the third worst year on record for insured losses, with nine of the ten largest natural catastrophes of the year related to weather. (Earlier post.)

A poll carried out by Accenture and released today found that eight out of ten (84%) consumers in Australia say that they are concerned by climate change and believe it will directly impact their life (81%). 60% of Australians were found to be quite or very optimistic that humans will be able to take the necessary actions in order to solve global climate change.

However, a 2007 poll found that 88% of people contacted in Australia said they would be willing to switch to energy companies offering low carbon emission products and services, yet a year later, only 17% had switched gas or electricity provider, and just 5% had changed their oil provider.

[1] Rick Wallace: NSW stealing Snowy’s precious flows. In The Australian, 6 February 2009
[2] Padraic Murphy, The Queensland floods will devastate the beef industry as livestock starve. In The Australian, 6 February 2009
[3] Kevin Hennessey et al.: IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II: Australia and New Zealand. Cambridge University Press, 2007
[4] CSIRO: Climate Change in Australia – Technical Report 2007.
[5] N.H. Saji et al.: A dipole mode in the tropical Indian Ocean. In Nature, Volume 401, Issue 6751, 23 September 1999
[6] Bob Beale, University of New South Wales: Indian Ocean causes Big Dry: drought mystery solved. 5 February 2009
[7] Peter Marshall, Face global warming or lives will be at risk. In The Age, 12 February 2009

- from greencarcongress. 12 Feb 2009

How to create web archive file in firefox

Go to the web site in FireFox
Click Print
Select Print to File
Select output format as pdf or ps
Click Print button.

you will get a single file of the web page.

Even though maff file format saving is better than the pdf

Southern California Edison for 1.3-GW CSP

Southern California Edison (SCE) and BrightSource Energy have reached agreements on a series of contracts for 1,300 megawatts (MW) of solar thermal power. The agreement, which now requires approval from the California Public Utilities Commission, calls for a the development of seven projects to make up the total capacity.

The first of these solar power plants, sized at 100 MW and located in Ivanpah, California., could be operating in early 2013 and is expected to produce 286,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of renewable electricity per year. BrightSource will build and place in commercial operation each of its plants as quickly as permitting and infrastructure allow. The full 1,300 megawatts of projects will produce 3.7 billion kilowatt-hours of clean energy.

BrightSource Energy will build the plants using its proprietary Luz Power Tower 550 (LPT 550) energy system. The system uses thousands of small mirrors called heliostats to re­flect sunlight onto a boiler atop a tower to produce high temperature steam.

The steam is then piped to a conventional tur­bine which generates electricity. In order to conserve precious desert water, the LPT 550 system uses air-cooling to convert the steam back into water. The water is then returned to the boiler in an environmentally-friendly closed cycle. This fully integrated energy system is designed to offer the highest operating efficiencies and lowest capital costs in the industry.

- from renewableenergyworld. 11 Feb 2009

What US says about nuclear power

In September NRG Energy, an energy wholesaler in Princeton, N.J., applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to build and operate a two-reactor nuclear plant near Bay City, Tex. The NRC is expecting 19 similar applications in the next 18 months. If approved, they will be eligible for loan guarantees under the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Pro-nuclear groups herald the coming flood of applications as proof that nuclear energy makes economic sense. Nonsense. The only reason investors are interested: government handouts. Absent those subsidies, investor interest would be zero.

A cold-blooded examination of the industry’s numbers bears this out. Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf concludes that the total cost of juice from a new nuclear plant today is 4.31 cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s far more than electricity from a conventional coal-fired plant (3.53 cents) or “clean coal” plant (3.55 cents). When he takes away everyone’s tax subsidies, however, Metcalf finds that nuclear power is even less competitive (5.94 cents per kwh versus 3.79 cents and 4.37 cents, respectively).

Nuclear energy investments are riskier than investments in coal- or gas-fired electricity. High upfront costs and long construction times mean investors have to wait years to get their money back. The problem here is not just the cost per watt, several times that of a gas plant, but the fact that nuclear plants are big. Result: The upfront capital investment can be 10 to 15 times as great as for a small gas-fired turbine.

A nuclear plant’s costs are not only higher but more uncertain. Investors have to worry that completion will take place late–or never (witness the abandonment of the reactor at Shoreham, N.Y.). Accordingly, nuclear power would have to be substantially cheaper than coal- or gas-fired power to get orders in a free market.

So why does NRG want to build a nuclear plant in Texas? Two factors are in play. First, the license costs a relatively small amount compared with the cost of construction. Second, the federal government would guarantee up to 100% of the $6.5 billion to $8.5 billion NRG might borrow from capital markets (as long as it doesn’t exceed 80% of the project cost). Without such guarantees no investor would lend significant amounts of capital to NRG.

How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors.

The only nuclear plant built in a liberalized-energy economy in the last decade was one ordered in Finland in 2004. The Finnish plant was built on 60-year purchase contracts signed by electricity buyers, by a firm (the French Areva) that scarcely seems to be making good money on the deal.

What, then, should government do to overcome nuclear’s economic problems? Absolutely nothing. There is no more to the right-wing case for nuclear subsidies than there is to the left-wing case for solar subsidies.

- from cato. 26 Nov 2007

Energy efficiency can reduce 34 per cent electricity demand

Massive inefficiencies across the US’s energy network can be eliminated relatively easily, cutting about a third off the nation’s energy use, according to a major new analysis of power consumption.

The study from environmental think tank the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), entitled Assessing the Electric Productivity Gap and the US Efficiency Opportunity, argues that wholescale efficiency improvements could be in place by 2020, slashing US greenhouse gas emissions in the process. At present the electric power industry is responsible for emitting about one third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US.

The report recommends that the 40 worst-performing states in terms of energy efficiency learn from energy productivity measures implemented by the other 10 states, which RMI deemed most productive with their electricity.

If the rest of the country achieved the electric productivity already attained by the top-performing states, the country would save a total of 1.2m gigawatt-hours annually – equivalent to 30 per cent of the nation’s annual electricity use or 62 per cent of US coal-fired electrical power.

“In 2020, if the US can, on average, achieve the electric productivity of the top-performing states today, we can anticipate a 34 per cent reduction in projected electricity demand,” Mathias Bell, one of the authors of the report, said.

- from businessgreen. 12 Feb 2009

Please Switch Off Something.

The fires of climate change

Victorian taxpayers are about to fund a full-scale royal commission into the catastrophic bushfires of February 7 in which 208 people – probably more – were burnt to death.

It is significant to note that two stakeholder groups have already come to concluded views: the 13,000 professional firefighters of Australia and the Climate Institute, which commissions scientific research in Australia into fires and global atmospheric warming.

Climate Institute CEO John Connor told Stateline NSW (on February 20, 2009) that in his organisation’s concluded view: “These are the fires of climate change that we’ve seen in Victoria and perhaps indeed in Port Lincoln in South Australia in 2005. Climate change is not just about warmer weather. It’s about wilder weather. Climate change costs … climate change kills”.

In 2007 the Climate Institute (www.climateinstitute.org.au) commissioned research by the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO Marine and Atmosphere Research. The researchers produced a paper, “Bushfire Weather in Southeast Australia”, which, like actuaries for the insurance industry, projected extreme and catastrophic fire weather risks for the regions of Australia through each increment in global atmospheric warming.

The paper did not then declare Sydney’s ‘Black Christmas’ bushfires in late 2001, the Canberra bushfires in January 2003 or the 2003 and 2007 eastern Victorian bushfire to be directly related to climate change. The language was equivocal: “The recent observed rise in fire danger may be due to a mix of both natural variability and human-induced climate change. The relative importance of these two factors is not known at this time. Observations from the next few years to decades will allow the determination of the role played by each of these factors”.

While some politicians have accepted that climate change is behind the exponential increase in extreme fire weather, no government – state, territory of federal – has yet declared the now deadly bushfire phenomenon in Australia to be by scientific definition ‘the fires of climate change’.

The 13,000 professional firefighters of Australia have collectively determined that climate change is producing the extreme fire weather conditions which have confronted them over recent years. This again is a significant declaration in a body (the United Firefighters Union of Australia) which is known to have its share of climate change sceptics within the membership.

In the open letter to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (dated February 12), national secretary Peter Marshall said:

“Consider the recent devastation in Victoria. Research by the CSIRO, Climate Institute and the Bushfire Council found that a ‘low global warming scenario’ will see catastrophic fire events happen in parts of regional Victoria every 5-7 years by 2020, and every 3-4 years by 2050, with up to 50 per cent more extreme danger fire days. However, under a ‘high global warming scenario’, catastrophic events are predicted to occur every year in Mildura, and firefighters have been warned to expect an up to 230 per cent increase in extreme fire days in Bendigo. And in Canberra, the site of devastating fires in 2003, we are being asked to prepare for up to a massive 221 per cent increase in extreme fire days by 2050.”

The Climate Institute’s website gives a state by state, region by region break down of FFDI (forest fire danger index) tracking the annual change in fire weather.

“Of most concern to firefighters are days classified as having ‘very high’ or ‘extreme’ fire dangers. The number of very high and extreme fire-weather days is projected to increase in all scenarios. For example, in Canberra, if the rate of global warming is low, the number of extreme days increases around 8-10 per cent by 2020, and 17-25 per cent by 2050. If the rate of global warming is high, the number of extreme days rises 25-42 per cent by 2020 and 137-221 per cent (around double to triple) by 2050.”

As the politicians, economists, insurance companies and emergency services struggle to come to terms with what this means, Australians residing and working in the bush landscapes have clearly been warned.

Do they abandon their now-dangerous lifestyles, or do they push for policy responses which confront the fires of climate change?

- from abc. 20 Feb 2009

Intellectual property or intellectual monopoly

“Intellectual property” is one of those ideologically loaded terms that can cause an argument just by being uttered. The term wasn’t in widespread use until the 1960s, when it was adopted by the World Intellectual Property Organization, a trade body that later attained exalted status as a UN agency.

WIPO’s case for using the term is easy to understand: people who’ve “had their property stolen” are a lot more sympathetic in the public imagination than “industrial entities who’ve had the contours of their regulatory monopolies violated”, the latter being the more common way of talking about infringement until the ascendancy of “intellectual property” as a term of art.

Does it matter what we call it? Property, after all, is a useful, well-understood concept in law and custom, the kind of thing that a punter can get his head around without too much thinking.

That’s entirely true – and it’s exactly why the phrase “intellectual property” is, at root, a dangerous euphemism that leads us to all sorts of faulty reasoning about knowledge. Faulty ideas about knowledge are troublesome at the best of times, but they’re deadly to any country trying to make a transition to a “knowledge economy”.

Fundamentally, the stuff we call “intellectual property” is just knowledge – ideas, words, tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases. This stuff is similar to property in some ways: it can be valuable, and sometimes you need to invest a lot of money and labour into its development to realise that value.

Out of control

But it is also dissimilar from property in equally important ways. Most of all, it is not inherently “exclusive”. If you trespass on my flat, I can throw you out (exclude you from my home). If you steal my car, I can take it back (exclude you from my car). But once you know my song, once you read my book, once you see my movie, it leaves my control. Short of a round of electroconvulsive therapy, I can’t get you to un-know the sentences you’ve just read here.

It’s this disconnect that makes the “property” in intellectual property so troublesome. If everyone who came over to my flat physically took a piece of it away with them, it’d drive me bonkers. I’d spend all my time worrying about who crossed the threshold, I’d make them sign all kinds of invasive agreements before they got to use the loo, and so on. And as anyone who has bought a DVD and been forced to sit through an insulting, cack-handed “You wouldn’t steal a car” short film knows, this is exactly the kind of behaviour that property talk inspires when it comes to knowledge.

But there’s plenty of stuff out there that’s valuable even though it’s not property. For example, my daughter was born on February 3, 2008. She’s not my property. But she’s worth quite a lot to me. If you took her from me, the crime wouldn’t be “theft”. If you injured her, it wouldn’t be “trespass to chattels”. We have an entire vocabulary and set of legal concepts to deal with the value that a human life embodies.

What’s more, even though she’s not my property, I still have a legally recognised interest in my daughter. She’s “mine” in some meaningful sense, but she also falls under the purview of many other entities – the governments of the UK and Canada, the NHS, child protection services, even her extended family – they can all lay a claim to some interest in the disposition, treatment and future of my daughter.

Flexibility and nuance

Trying to shoehorn knowledge into the “property” metaphor leaves us without the flexibility and nuance that a true knowledge rights regime would have. For example, facts are not copyrightable, so no one can be said to “own” your address, National Insurance Number or the PIN for your ATM card. Nevertheless, these are all things that you have a strong interest in, and that interest can and should be protected by law.

There are plenty of creations and facts that fall outside the scope of copyright, trademark, patent and the other rights that make up the hydra of Intellectual Property, from recipes to phone books to “illegal art” like musical mashups. These works are not property – and shouldn’t be treated as such – but for every one of them, there’s an entire ecosystem of people with a legitimate interest in them.

I once heard the WIPO representative for the European association of commercial broadcasters explain that, given all the investment his members had put into recording the ceremony on the 60th anniversary of the Dieppe Raid in the second world war, they should be given the right to own the ceremony, just as they would own a teleplay or any other “creative work”. I immediately asked why the “owners” should be some rich guys with cameras – why not the families of the people who died on the beach? Why not the people who own the beach? Why not the generals who ordered the raid? When it comes to knowledge, “ownership” just doesn’t make sense – lots of people have an interest in the footage of the Dieppe commemoration, but to argue that anyone “owns” it is just nonsensical.

Copyright – with all its quirks, exceptions and carve outs – was, for centuries, a legal regime that attempted to address the unique characteristics of knowledge, rather than pretending to be just another set of rules for the governance of property. The legacy of 40 years of “property talk” is an endless war between intractable positions of ownership, theft and fair dealing.

If we’re going to achieve a lasting peace in the knowledge wars, it’s time to set property aside, time to start recognising that knowledge – valuable, precious, expensive knowledge – isn’t owned. Can’t be owned. The state should regulate our relative interests in the ephemeral realm of thought, but that regulation must be about knowledge, not a clumsy remake of the property system.

- from guardian. 12 Feb 2008.

Salamander population is declining

The decline of amphibian populations worldwide has been documented primarily in frogs, but salamander populations also appear to have plummeted, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.

By comparing tropical salamander populations in Central America today with results of surveys conducted between 1969 and 1978, UC Berkeley researchers have found that populations of many of the commonest salamanders have steeply declined.

On the flanks of the Tajumulco volcano on the west coast of Guatemala, for example, two of the three commonest species 40 years ago have disappeared, while the third was nearly impossible to find.

Frog declines have been attributed to a variety of causes, ranging from habitat destruction, pesticide use and introduced fish predators to the Chytrid fungus, which causes an often fatal disease, chytridiomycosis.

These do not appear to be responsible for the decline of Central American salamanders, Wake said. Instead, because the missing salamanders tend to be those living in narrow altitude bands, Wake believes that global warming is pushing these salamanders to higher and less hospitable elevations.

Missing frogs are easy to spot, Wake said, because they gather in ponds to breed, or they can be caught in the glare of a flashlight at night. Many salamanders, however, in particular the Plethodontid salamanders, which comprise two-thirds of all species worldwide, are secretive, living under logs and rocks. Nevertheless, anecdotal accounts have pointed to a salamander decline and an amphibian decline, in general.

In Guatemala, those salamanders with narrow elevational niches and living exclusively under logs were most affected, while salamander “generalists” able to live in a variety of habitats, from leaf axils and bromeliads to moss mats, bark and burrows in the soil, were in about the same abundance as before. There was little evidence of Chytrid fungus, and habitat quality is generally similar to what it was in the 1970s. A nearby volcano with several of the same affected species is a nature reserve, and surprisingly, only a single salamander was discovered on two trips.

- from eurekalert. 9 Feb 2009

70% increase in wind jobs in US

Here’s a talking point in the green jobs debate: The wind industry now employs more people than coal mining in the United States.

Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year, according to a report released Tuesday from the American Wind Energy Association. In contrast, coal mining employs about 81,000 workers. (Those figures are from a 2007 U.S. Department of Energy report but coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it’s down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the deindustrialization of the past two decades.

The big spike in wind jobs was a result of a record-setting 50% increase in installed wind capacity, with 8,358 megawatts coming online in 2008 (enough to power some 2 million homes).  That’s a third of the nation’s total 25,170 megawatts of wind power generation. Wind farms generating more than 4,000 megawatts of electricity were completed in the last three months of 2008 alone.

- from greenwombat. 28 Jan 2009

Most efficient solar water heater

An Irish company has launched what could be the most efficient solar hot water panel ever produced. Surface Power in County Mayo says it plans to create 20 new jobs over the next 12 months with the launch and international distribution of its new product.

Independent certification by TUV Rhineland has shown that when compared to other solar hot water panels the Surface developed panel was in one case as much as 131% more efficient in morning and evening time and 76% more efficient at midday.

Surface Power estimates that the product, which has undergone six years of development and testing, has the potential to reduce domestic and commercial hot water bills by up to 70% if insulation standards meet new building regulations.

- from renewableenergyworld. 6 Feb 2009

Solar cells from butterfly wing structure

Quasi-honeycomb like structure (QHS), shallow concavities structure (SCS), and cross-ribbing structure (CRS) were synthesized onto a fluorine-doped tin-oxide-coated glass substrate using butterfly wings as biotemplates separately. Morphologies of the photoanodes, which were maintained from the original butterfly wings, were characterized by scanning and transmission electron microscopies. The results show that the calcined photoanodes with butterfly wings’ structures, which comprised arranged ridges and ribs consisting of nanoparticles, were fully crystallined. Analysis of absorption spectra measurements under visible light wavelength indicates that the light-harvesting efficiencies of the QHS photoanode were higher than the normal titania photoanode without biotemplates because of the special microstructures, and then the whole solar cell efficiency can be lifted based on this.

- from acs.

Drinking water safe from radiation in Ottawa

An initial investigation at a sewage treatment plant in Ottawa indicates a commonly-used medical isotope is the source of low levels of radioactivity found in shipments of biosolids from the plant.

The City of Ottawa, however, says it can’t confirm the discovery. Instead, city officials say they expect a report from a consultant in a week’s time.

Two loads of the material, which were being sent to a New York company for composting, were stopped at the border on Jan. 29 because radioactive levels were too high. Two more truckloads of the sludge have also tested positive. The material has since been placed in a secure location.

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission says the identified isotope is “normally associated with waste from hospitals or persons who have undergone medical treatment.” Officials are insuring the public there is no risk to the health and safety of Canadians or the environment.

Now, the commission says it will remind Ottawa hospitals of their responsibilities when it comes to disposing waste. However, hospitals CTV Ottawa talked to say they’ve been following the rules when it comes to waste disposal.

Meanwhile, Ottawa city staff is reassuring residents their drinking water is safe.

- from ottawa. 4 Feb 2009

Collapse Of Antarctic Ice Sheet

University of Toronto and Oregon State University geophysicists have shown that should the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse and melt in a warming world it is the coastlines of North America and of nations in the southern Indian Ocean that will face the greatest threats from rising sea levels.

The catastrophic increase in sea level, already projected to average between 16 and 17 feet around the world, would be almost 21 feet in such places as Washington, D.C., scientists say, putting it largely underwater. Many coastal areas would be devastated. Much of Southern Florida would disappear, according to researchers at Oregon State University.

three significant effects:

when an ice sheet melts, its gravitational pull on the ocean is reduced and water moves away from it. The net effect is that the sea level actually falls within 2,000 km of a melting ice sheet, and rises progressively further away from it. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapses, sea level will fall close to the Antarctic and will rise much more than the expected estimate in the northern hemisphere because of this gravitational effect;

the depression in the Antarctic bedrock that currently sits under the weight of the ice sheet will become filled with water if the ice sheet collapses. However, the size of this hole will shrink as the region rebounds after the ice disappears, pushing some of the water out into the ocean, and this effect will further contribute to the sea-level rise;

the melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will actually cause the Earth’s rotation axis to shift rather dramatically – approximately 500 metres from its present position if the entire ice sheet melts. This shift will move water from the southern Atlantic and Pacific oceans northward toward North America and into the southern Indian Ocean.

- from sciencedaily. 6 Feb 2009

You like big house?

Concrete’s impact on the environment starts when limestone is blasted in quarries to make cement – the binder, or substance that sets and hardens it into a useful building material. Cement accounts for 7 to 15% of concrete’s total mass by weight and is made by superheating (in coal-fired kilns) a mixture of limestone and clay and then grinding the resulting substance into a powder. When this power mixes with water, it forms strong calcium-silicate-hydrate bonds that can bind other particulates, like sand or gravel, to make concrete. The cement-to-water ratio determines the strength of the concrete.

Once limestone has been blasted and mined it is then transported to a cement plant, where the fuels used by the plant and machinery produce CO2 emissions. Next the limestone, or calcium carbonate, releases CO2 when it is heated to make the cement. Forty percent of CO2 emissions from the cement plant come from the combustion process and Sixty Percent of CO2 emissions come from the calcination process, according to the Cement Sustainability Initiative report produced by members of the concrete industry. The report also says that since calcination is intrinsic to the process, they must focus on reducing energy use associated with the manufacture of concrete.

Concrete producers also say that as concrete ages, it carbonates and reabsorbs all the CO2 released during calcination – but this process takes hundreds of years.The general consensus is that cement manufacturing produces about 5% of global CO2 emissions generated by human activity, and 3% of global emissions of all greenhouse gases. By comparison the transport sector is responsible for about 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so concrete has a pretty hefty share of the pie considering it’s just one material.

- from inhabitat. 5 Feb 2009

Better solution is reduce use. Try to live in small house.
Houses have only less than 30 years of life. You kids will not like the big house you built. They interests will be different according to their time. So build a small efficient house for the needs.

Solar power from Athenian School

The Athenian School will “flip the switch” on a new solar system at its Danville campus on February 11, with the student body, school officials, and Danville Mayor Arnerich as well as representatives from Tioga Energy, REC Solar, Mitsubishi Electric and New Resource Bank. The 220-kilowatt system consists of 1,300 photovoltaic panels arranged in the shape of a large ‘A’, representing a unique new solar mascot that will provide half the school’s power needs.

The 30,000 square foot installation of Mitsubishi Electric solar modules was designed and installed by REC Solar. Tioga Energy arranged the financing, including construction capital from New Resource Bank, and will operate Athenian’s solar power system under SurePath™ Solar Power Purchase Agreement (PPA). Athenian will buy the power generated by the system at a fixed rate over the length of the 20-year agreement, enabling the school to capture significant energy savings from the first day of operation.

- from businesswire. 4 Feb 2009

U.S. will lead in wind power

The national trade association of America’s wind industry says in 2008 the industry had another record growth year – the third record year in a row and generated more than $18 billion in revenues. This year, the United States passed Germany to become the world leader in wind generation, said the American Wind Energy Association in its year-end report.

AWEA says that this summer, the U.S. wind industry reached the 20,000-megawatt installed capacity milestone, doubling installed wind power generating capacity since 2006.

That 21,000 megawatts of capacity are expected to generate over 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2009, enough to serve over 5.5 million American homes.

- from ens-newswire. 26 Dec 2008

Software for library management

A software named Koha is used for library management. Its source code is available at http://koha.org/. It is under GPL license. So free to use.

Apache, MySql are pre-requisite for this installation.

Other packages to install are following. Do that installation by the command give.

$ apt-get install libmime-lite-perl libclass-factory-util-perl libmarc-perl libnet-z3950-zoom-perl libyaz-dev

$ apt-get install liblingua-stem-perl libxml-sax-machines-perl libmarc-record-perl libcgi-session-perl libdate-pcalc-perl libdate-ical-perl libdate-manip-perl liblist-moreutils-perl libmarc-charset-perl libmarc-xml-perl libnet-ldap-server-perl libpdf-report-perl libpdf-reuse-barcode-perl libxml-csv-perl libtext-csv-perl libtext-iconv-perl libxml-dumper-perl libxml-libxml-common-perl libxml-filter-xslt-perl libxml-rsslite-perl libxml-simple-perl libyaml-syck-perl libxml-rss-perl libschedule-at-perl libhtml-template-pro-perl libhtml-scrubber-perl libmarc-crosswalk-dublincore-perl libdate-calc-perl libclass-factory-perl libdata-ical-perl libmodule-pluggable-perl

Extract Koha source code to a temporary folder. Execute following commands like in the example.

$ cd /home/jag/drive/data/koha/koha-3.00.02
$ perl Makefile.PL
$ make
$ make test
$ make install
$ a2enmod rewrite
$ a2ensite koha && /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
$ zebrasrv -f /home/jag/koha/koha-conf.xml
$ adduser –gecos “Koha server” koha
$ mysqladmin -uroot create koha -p
$ echo “grant all on koha.* to ‘kohaadmin’@'localhost’ identified by ‘katikoan’;” | mysql -uroot -p
$ mysqladmin -uroot -p flush-privileges

Edit /etc/apache2/ports.conf and add the line:
Listen 8080

Restart Apache by executing the command:
$ apache2ctl restart

Browse to http://servername:8080/ and answer the questions

Ganges and rising sea level

Rising sea levels are causing salt water to flow into India’s biggest river, threatening its ecosystem and turning vast farmlands barren in the country’s east, a climate change expert warned Monday.

A study by an east Indian university in the city of Kolkata revealed surprising growth of mangroves on the Ganges river, said Pranabes Sanyal, the eastern India representative of the National Coastal Zone Management Authority (NCZMA).

Sea levels in some parts of the Bay of Bengal were rising at 3.14 mm annually against a global average of 2 mm, threatening the low-lying areas of eastern India.

Climate experts warned last year that as temperatures rise, the Indian subcontinent — home to about one-sixth of humanity — will be badly hit with more frequent and more severe natural disasters such as floods and storms and more disease and hunger.

Sanyal and the department of Oceanography at the Kolkata-based Jadavpur University spotted the mangrove plants, a rare phenomenon along the Ganges river belt, where east India’s biggest city of Kolkata with 12 million people lies.

Mangroves are more typically found 100 km (60 miles) away in the swampy Sundarban archipelago spread over a 26,000 sq km (10,000 sq mile) area on the world’s largest delta region.

The university said the sea had once extended up to the northern fringe of Kolkata

- from reuters. 2 Feb 2009

Mouse problem on laptop

gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

in it edit the kernel line to
title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=2946bc29-bb7c-466c-823e-86394c27eed3 ro quiet splash fr_FR i8042.reset
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

Add the bold

Stocks Plummet Across the Globe

what upsets the Europeans and the foreigners is that the US plan has done nothing at all about the debt crisis itself. It’s bailed out the creditors, but not a penny of the actual debts, the subprime mortgage debts, are addressed. Without any of the media knowing, the Federal Reserve over the last few months has given $850 billion of cash for trash already. This is what the $700 billion discussion in Congress was supposed to be about, but the Fed, without anyone knowing, has already been exchanging these securities. And the securities essentially have been swapped by the US bankers to their pals and not done anything at all to write down the actual subprime debts. There’s a big attempt to blame the victim now. And if you add up all of the subprime bad loans and defaults, that’s altogether $1 trillion. So far, the government has given away $6 trillion already to Wall Street. That’s much more than any of the subprime debt. And the volume of derivative trade has been estimated at $450 trillion, an unbelievable amount. So nobody has any idea about how much money is at stake.

And what really triggered a lot of this was the way in which Lehman went bankrupt. The day—and this has not been discussed either in America, but it’s all over the European press. The day before Lehman went bankrupt, it basically looted all of its foreign offices. For instance, in England, it emptied out the English account of a few billion dollars, leaving the English employees only with the money they—the little cards they had to use in the vending machines. No salaries were paid. The London office was closed down immediately. And the next day, Lehman used the money that it took from London to pay its closest associates to redeem the derivative trades that it had done. So the English bankers came out and said, in England, we have an ethic: it’s lend to the person, not against the asset. And they’ve come to the conclusion that the American bankers—well, we won’t say “crooks,” but let’s say they’re cronies who deal among themselves and are willing to screw the foreigner.

And this has created such a mistrust abroad that Europeans and Asians and OPEC country investors are simply pulling their money out of the US, because they don’t have a clue as to the solvency of the banks. We’re seeing the end result of the Alan Greenspan deregulatory revolution, where he said markets are all self-regulating. Right now, you’re seeing the markets self-regulate themselves. And the result is a wipeout of the American pyramiding.

The amazing thing about the crisis is how it keeps—it’s almost like a forest fire that keeps breaking out in different parts of the economy, now obviously spreading to General Motors and the other automobile companies. And David Weiss, the chief economist of Standard & Poor’s, said, “I’ve never seen a panic like this. I’ve seen stock markets drop, but not an overall panic.”

It’s all connected. the reason for General Motors going down isn’t so much because of a shortage of car sales, although that’s a large part of it, but General Motors has a huge pension fund. That’s its main problem. And with the stock market going down, that puts the pension fund way behind even more. And the problem that General Motors faces is insolvency, because of all of the pensions, which are really wage deferrals that it’s negotiated over the years. So that’s part of it.

Also, nobody can now get credit for new cars, not only here, but in Europe, too. In England, for instance, the September 1st is the day that the new licenses for autos go into effect, so people defer buying automobiles until September 1st, so they can show they have this year’s model.

General Motors sales in Europe and its affiliates abroad are way down. And here, the auto paper is facing rising defaults, and nobody—all of a sudden, nobody is able to borrow from the banks, because no matter how much money the government is going to be giving the banks, with these trillions of dollars, the banks are not lending them out.

And the reason the banks are not lending them out to car buyers and homeowners and other people are that the population is already loaned up. 40 percent of American income is spent now on rent, and about 15 to 20 percent on interest payments. And without addressing the debt problem, no matter how much money the banks have, they are not going to lend money to somebody who can’t afford to take on any more debt. And most people in America right now cannot afford to meet the bank’s standards for taking on any more debt. So none of this money that’s being given away has any effect at all on real people and purchasing power and cars and goods and services. It’s all to settle debt pyramiding among the banks and Wall Street institutions themselves.

It would be very nice if it were veering from one solution to another, but it really has only a single line of solution, and that is to bail out the Wall Street banks. There’s—nobody is suggesting here, nobody is suggesting in Europe, write down the debts of the debtors, rewrite—nobody is suggesting to rewrite the bankruptcy law. Nobody is suggesting to reintroduce progressive taxation. They’re not even suggesting a closing down of all of the tax gimmicks that make so many companies tax-free. So they’re actually following a very narrow, single-minded approach to only make the creditors whole on their losses, don’t do anything about the debts, and so nothing at all they’re going to be talking about this weekend is going to be addressing the economic slowdown or the recession. And for that reason, we’re going to get worse.

Even on CNBC, Jim Kramer said that it’s time to put your money in cash. This is not really a buying opportunity when it goes down. The only thing they can do is put their money in like a Vanguard Treasury or money market fund. Every stock adviser that I know has their money out of the stock market now, because none of us can tell what’s happening. None of us know. It’s the unknown. And why would you want to take a risk in this? At least you can preserve what you have.

Discussion: Michael Hudson, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez

Michael Hudson, president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri.

- from democracynow. 10 Oct 2008

Areva got Niger uranium

The French nuclear energy group Areva has been awarded a licence to build and operate the Imouraren mine in Niger. Areva says it expects it to become Africa’s biggest uranium mine and the second biggest in the world. Mining will begin on the site in 2012, with 1,400 staff producing 5,000 tonnes a year. The investment will go ahead despite the fall in uranium prices, which have almost halved while negotiations have been taking place.

Areva will have a 66.65% stake in the mine, with Niger holding the rest. The French company will provide two-thirds of the initial investment of 1.12bn euros ($1.51bn; £1.02bn).

- from bbc. 6 Jan 2009

New EPR reactor is seven times more dangerous

Following the French government’s announcement that it wants to build a second EPR reactor comes the news that the nuclear waste produced by this so-called state of the art reactor is far more dangerous than that of ordinary reactors.

The disturbing news was buried on page 137 of the Environmental Impact Assessment prepared by Posiva, the company responsible for managing waste at the world’s first EPR currently under construction at Olkiluoto, Finland and also in findings by the National Co-operative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra).

In simple terms, the EPR reactor produces more of a radioactive isotope called Iodine-129 making its waste seven times more hazardous.

Iodine-129 is an isotope worth remembering. The numbers associated with it are staggering. It has a half-life of 16 million years but is still dangerous after more than 160 million years. To put it in context, the human race evolved from apes just five million years ago.

We as a species simply do not have the technology capable of storing this highly dangerous waste for such a huge length of time. Yet again we see how the nuclear industry’s claims about a ‘clean’ and ‘safe’ energy source are a lie. And that’s before we even get to discussing the enormous costs involved in attempting to dispose of this waste in anything close to a safe fashion (let’s not fool ourselves into thinking this is in any way achievable).

So, the much heralded EPR, this third-generation, state of the art, flagship beacon of technological triumph is about to make the world a more dangerous place – and not just for us but for those living in the distant future.

- from greenpeace. 2 Feb 2009.

Green belt for world’s longest desert highway

Last year, the above photograph of the Tarim Desert Highway in western China was used to decorate a post in our now retired Prunings series. We’ve always thought that it should have its own separate post, so here it is.

As described by Wikipedia, the highway “crosses the Taklamakan desert from north to south. The highway links the cities of Luntai and Minfeng on the northern and southern edges of the Tarim basin. The total length of the highway is 552km; approximately 446km of the highway cross uninhabited areas covered by shifting sand dunes, making it the longest such highway in the world.”

“In 1994,” says People’s Daily Online, “the Tarim desert highway was expanded to the central area of the Tarim Basin, and the completion of the central Tarim oil-gas field, the largest of its kind in China, will make Xinjiang become a strategic substitute area for China’s oil and gas resources. Following this, the highway continued to expand in the desert and has turned into a macro-artery for bringing along the economic development in southern Xinjiang.”

- from pruned.blogspot

Cutting Yucca Mountain project budget

The already scaled back federal funding to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain would drop by close to $100 million more through the rest of fiscal 2009, continuing a steep downward spiral that raises new questions about the future of the project. The annual spending level of $288.4 million would be a record low or close to it for the 26-year-old nuclear project, Energy Department managers said.

DOE officials have adapted to shrinking budgets in recent years through layoffs and by revising Yucca work plans. The agency filed for a repository construction license last summer. Project managers have not indicated what would be the ultimate tipping point below which it might not be possible to sustain the effort.

For Yucca Mountain, the new budget would be $98 million less than what the Department of Energy is being given now under the stopgap bill, and more than $200 million less than the Bush administration requested early in 2008.

With President Barack Obama also having come out against Yucca Mountain, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev has stepped up his activity and his rhetoric against the project. He has said the reductions in the upcoming spending bill would be only the first step, and that Obama’s budget for 2010 would contain “little if anything” to keep the project going.

- from lvrj. 28 Jan 2009

Global Wind Power Capacity Grew 28.8% in 2008

Global wind energy capacity grew by 28.8% last year, even higher than the average over the past decade, to reach total global installations of more than 120.8 GW at the end of 2008, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. More than 27 GW of new wind power generation capacity came online in 2008, 36% more than in 2007.

The leading markets in terms of new installed capacity in 2008 were the US and China. New US wind energy installations totalled 8,358 MW for a total installed capacity of 25,170 MW. The US has now officially overtaken Germany (23,902 MW) as number one in wind power. Europe and North America are running neck-to-neck, with about 8.9 GW each of new installed capacity in 2008, with Asia closely following with 8.6 GW.

- from greencarcongress. 2 Feb 2009

ocean acidification

More than 150 leading marine scientists from 26 countries are calling for immediate action by policymakers to reduce CO2 emissions sharply so as to avoid widespread and severe damage to marine ecosystems from increasing ocean acidification—the “other CO2 problem”. They issued this warning in the Monaco Declaration, released on 30 January.

The scientists note that ocean acidification is already detectable, and that it is accelerating. They caution that its negative socio-economic impacts can only be avoided by limiting future atmospheric CO2 levels.

The ocean absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere at a rate of more than 20 million tons per day, thus removing one-fourth of the anthropogenic CO2 emitted to the atmosphere each year and reducing the climate-change impacts of this greenhouse gas. However, when CO2 dissolves in seawater, it forms carbonic acid. As this “ocean acidification” continues, it decreases both ocean pH and the concentration of carbonate ion, the basic building block of the shells and skeletons of many marine organisms.

The rate of current acidification is much more rapid that past natural changes. Surface ocean pH has already dropped by 0.1 units since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This rate of acidification has not been experienced by marine organisms, including reef-building corals, for many millions of years, notes the Research Priorities report. The future chemical changes that will occur in the ocean as a result of increasing atmospheric CO2 are highly predictable.

- from greencarcongress. 30 Jan 2009

Narwhal The First Victim of Global Warming

The polar bear is indeed a more iconic animal than the narwhal and, on top of that, despite being classified as marine, we can see it mostly on land. This may explain why people have been focusing more on it than on other Arctic animals, when warning about the danger of extinction caused by global warming. With all this, a new research published in the Ecological Applications journal shows which species would be the first victim: the narwhal.

The narwhal is a cetacean with a long spiral tusk present only
on the male – it is believed that it was this tusk that led to the creation of the myth of the unicorn in medieval times. (However, the legend could have also started from a species of rhino from Central Asia that, sadly, became extinct about 1,000 years ago.) During an 11-year survey, researchers from three countries assessed the vulnerabilities to increasing warming manifested by Arctic sea mammals. As far as the magnitude of the risk is concerned, the narwhal and polar bear were followed by the hooded seal, bowhead whale and walrus. Less menaced Arctic species were the ringed and the bearded seal.

“What we wanted to do was look at the whole picture because there’s been a lot of attention on polar bears. We’re talking about a whole ecosystem. We’re talking about several different species that use ice extensively and are very vulnerable,” said co-author Ian Stirling, a polar bear and seal specialist for the Canadian government.

The researchers focused on nine factors connected to the ability to resist climate changes, like population size, habitat uniqueness, diet diversity and degree of dependence on sea ice. The narwhal, a less studied species until now, has a current population of 50,000 to 80,000, while the polar bear, more dependent on ice, has a population of about 20,000.

“There could a bazillion of them, but if the habitat or the things that they need are not going to be around, they’re not going to make it. Polar bears can adapt a bit to the changing Arctic climate, narwhals can’t,” said Stanford University biologist Terry Root.

“The narwhal, which dives about 6,000 feet (2,000 m) to feed on Greenland halibut, is the ultimate specialist, evolved specifically to live in small cracks in parts of the Arctic where it’s 99% heavy ice,” said lead author Kristin Laidre, a research scientist at the University of Washington.

The melting of the ice not only leaves the narwhal without its habitat, but it also gives free access to its most fearsome natural predators, the orca (the other predator being the polar bear). “Since it’s so restricted to the migration routes it takes, it’s restricted to what it eats, it makes it more vulnerable to the loss of those things,” Laidre told LiveScience.

It is “surprising because the polar bear gets a lot of attention. Inuit (Eskimo) natives of Greenland were telling scientists last year that it seemed that the narwhal population was in trouble,” explained Bob Corell, who led a massive assessment of risk in the Arctic in 2004.

- from softpedia 13 May 2008

41.1% efficient solar cells

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE have achieved a record efficiency of 41.1% for the conversion of sunlight into electricity. Sunlight is concentrated by a factor of 454 and focused onto a small 5 mm² multi-junction solar cell made out of GaInP/GaInAs/ Ge (gallium indium phosphide, gallium indium arsenide on a germanium substrate).

Since 1999, Fraunhofer ISE has been developing metamorphic multi-junction solar cells, which are a special type of solar cells using III-V semiconductor compounds. These cells are made out of thin Ga0.35In0.65P and Ga0.83In0.17As layers on GaAs or Ge substrates. These materials are especially suitable for converting sunlight into electricity. They can be combined together, however, only by applying a trick called metamorphic growth. In contrast to conventional solar cells, the semiconductors in these cells do not have the same lattice constant (distance between the atoms in a crystalline structure). This makes it difficult to grow the III-V semiconductor layers with a high crystal quality, since at the interface of materials with different lattice constants strain is present that results in the creation of dislocations and other crystal defects. The researchers at Fraunhofer ISE have succeeded in overcoming this obstacle. They have managed to localize the defects in a region of the solar cell that is not electrically active. As a result, the active regions of the solar cell remain relatively free of defects – a prerequisite for achieving the highest efficiencies. Prof. Eicke R. Weber, Director of Fraunhofer ISE emphasizes, “This is an especially good example of how the control of crystal defects in semiconductors can lead to a breakthrough in technology.”

This metamorphic crystal growth now enables the researchers to use a much larger range of III-V compound semiconductors for growing their multi-junction solar cells. For these highly efficient structures, it is decisive that the solar spectrum is divided into three equally large spectral regions by a suitable choice of light absorbing materials. In this way all of the three subcells generate the same amount of current. This is an important argument in favor of a serial connected solar cell, where the device current is limited ultimately by the smallest current generated by one of the subcells. By choosing the metamorphic Ga0.35In0.65P/ Ga0.83In0.17As/Ge material combination, a solar cell structure could be chosen for the first time that is completely current matched under the terrestrial solar spectrum. This is what makes the structure so efficient for solar energy conversion and is an important reason for the achievement of the high efficiencies. At a sunlight concentration factor of 454, the researchers in Freiburg set a world record of 41.1%. Even at a higher sunlight concentration of 880, an efficiency of 40.4% was measured.

The high efficiency multi-junction solar cells are used in concentrating photovoltaic systems for solar power stations in countries with a large fraction of direct solar radiation. Fraunhofer ISE is working together with the company Azur Space in Heilbronn as well as Concentrix Solar GmbH in Freiburg to make this technology competitive as soon as possible. “The high efficiencies of our solar cells are the most effective way to reduce the electricity generation costs for concentrating PV systems,” says Dr. Andreas Bett, Department Head at Fraunhofer ISE. “We want that photovoltaics becomes competitive with conventional methods of electricity production as soon as possible. With our new efficiency results, we have moved a big step further towards achieving this goal!”

The research on III-V multi-junction solar cells for concentrating photovoltaics at Fraunhofer ISE in the last 15 years has been initially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF and later as well by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety BMU. Also the Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt DBU contributed financially by providing several grants for doctoral students.

- from fraunhofer. 14 Jan 2009

Making cheaper LED bulbs

UK materials scientists have discovered a cheaper way to produce LED bulbs, which are three times as efficient as fluorescent lamps. Gallium nitride (GaN) LEDs have many advantages over compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) and incandescent bulbs. They switch on instantly, with no gradual warm-up, and can burn for an average of 100,000 hours before they need replacing – 10 times as long as fluorescent lamps and some 130 times as long as an incandescent bulb. CFLs also contain small levels of mercury, which makes environmentally-friendly disposal of spent bulbs difficult.

The cost of production has kept the LEDs far from homes and offices, however. Gallium nitride cannot be grown on silicon like other solid-state electronic components because it shrinks at twice the rate of silicon as it cools. Crystals of GaN must be grown at 1000°C, so by the time a new LED made on silicon has cooled, it has already cracked, rendering the devices unusable.

One solution is to grow the LEDs on sapphire, which shrinks and cools at much the same rate as GaN. But the expense is too great to be commercially competitive.

Now Colin Humphreys’s team at the University of Cambridge has discovered a simple solution to the shrinkage problem.

They included layers of aluminium gallium nitride in their LED design. These layers shrink at a much slower rate during cooling and help to counteract the fast-shrinkage of pure gallium nitride. These LEDs can be grown on silicon as so many other electronics components are. “They still work well as LEDs even with those extra layers inside,” says Humphreys.

- from newscientist. 29 Jan 2009

960-megawatt wind project in Germany

RWE Innogy has acquired the project company ENOVA Energieanlagen GmbH, which owns the rights to develop a 960-megawatt (MW) wind project off the German coast. The project, North Sea Windpower 3, will be renamed Innogy Nordsee 1 and, if developed, will be the largest offshore wind farm off Germany’s coast.

Following regulatory approvals the installation will be built 40 kilometers north of the island of Juist, within an area of around 150 km² and in water 26-34 meters deep. Between 150 and 180 wind turbines with a capacity of 5-6 MW each are planned for the wind farm.

RWE Innogy and ENOVA expect to receive the approval for the project by the end of 2009 and initial preparations could then start in 2010. The first wind turbines should start running as early as 2011. The whole wind farm is expected to be completed in 2015 at a total investment of around €2.8 billion [US $3.72 billion].

- from renewableenergyworld

Wall St crisis and world market

Markets around the globe continue to plummet despite indications from Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke that he would lower interest rates. Bernanke described the financial crisis as a threat of “historic dimension.”

While Britain prepared to unveil a rescue package for its leading banks, the International Monetary Fund called for globally coordinated policy actions and said it expects credit losses to reach $1.4 trillion. The slump in Europe and Asia followed a huge sell-off on Wall Street, which saw the Dow Jones close down more than 500 points on Tuesday. Markets are down sharply today in London, France and Germany. In Asia, Japan’s stock market plummeted 9.4 percent, its biggest one-day drop in more than two decades. Markets in Australia, China and Taiwan are among other fallers. And Iceland, which enjoys one of the highest standards of living in the world, is facing a near financial meltdown. The government has taken over the country’s second-biggest bank, fixed the exchange rate of its plummeting currency, and asked Russia for a massive loan, as it tries to stop the collapse of its economy. Meanwhile, Russia, Indonesia, Ukraine and Romania shut down their stock exchanges.

In further signs the crisis is escalating, Britain unveiled plans today to inject up to 50 billion pounds, close to $90 billion, into its biggest retail banks.

What is happening now is that the crisis, which started in the United States three weeks ago, is moving across the Atlantic, and it’s hitting the European markets. The problem is that European banks are, to a certain extent, linked to American banks, but also they started to play the market using derivatives, but also mortgage-backed securities themselves. So what is happening is that in their portfolio at the moment, there is an increase in toxic assets, as in the United States, and very, very little liquidity. So the banks need money, and governments are intervening to tap liquidity into the financial markets—exactly the same thing that has happened in the US.

A year ago, Great Britain nationalized Northern Rock, the first bank they were really into its financial situation. And what they’re doing at the moment, they are nationalizing parts of banks which are in need of immediate financial help. So the ownership of between 40 to 50 percent of these banks is passing on to the Treasury. So, the people, basically, the population of the United Kingdom, the taxpayer, is going to be the owner of these shares. In exchange of that, the government is pumping money into these banks.

But, it’s a dangerous route, because, of course, the taxpayers cannot cover the entire debt of the United Kingdom banking system. So this is why Gordon Brown has called an emergency meeting for next Tuesday, where all the European governments’ representatives—but also, the United States—will attend, in order to find a solution to what looks like a general banking meltdown.

Iceland—it’s not only about banks going down; this is about the entire country, one of the highest standards of living in the world, the entire country in financial ruin.

this is the danger. The danger is that these governments step in and nationalize banks and take on the entire debt of these banks. Eventually, this debt is going to be bigger than the GDP of the country, but also bigger than the amount of money that this country can attract in order to cover the debt. This is what is happening in Iceland.

Iceland yesterday issued an emergency call to the European countries. Now, let’s not forget that Iceland is part of Europe, and they actually use the euro as their currency. So they issued this emergency call, asking for funds, asking for help. And the only country that lent money to Iceland—$3 billion dollars—was Russia. So, today, this morning, they suspended operation, banking operation, in Iceland in order to find a solution to what looks like the impossibility of the government to cover the entire debt of the three largest banks in Iceland.

This is like a sort of shock waves. It starts in New York on Wall Street, and now it’s moving across the world, because banks have links with each other. So some banks in Europe, some banks in Japan or in China have assets which were, you know, toxic assets coming out of—from Wall Street or from other—from the city of London, from France or from, you know, wherever. You know, there were these toxic assets.

So, what is happening is that countries are trying to rescue, first of all, their own banks. So we see in Germany that the German government has intervened for the last week, week and a half, massively on the market. It saved the Hypo Bank, which is the largest bank, which gave mortgages in Germany. And what the German government has been trying to do in the last three or four days was to avoid a concerted effort of the Europeans to save European banks, because, of course, Germany is the country which has most assets. It’s actually the country that has cash, and it doesn’t want to use this cash to save French banks or Italian banks. But, if Iceland comes will come under serious stress in the next few days, the Europeans will have to save Iceland, because you can’t have a European country—you can’t have a country which is inside the euro going bankrupt without having tremendously negative effects inside the euro area.

Now, countries like Japan are also in very serious trouble. And let’s not forget that Japan just came out in the last six months from a recession, similar to the one we’re going in, which lasted for ten years. So its economy is particularly weak. And then, finally, also China capped the interest rate today for the second time in two weeks. But, the Chinese government, the Japanese government, to a certain extent, has a much bigger margin of maneuver, because their exposure to these toxic assets is much lower than the exposure of the Europeans.

The Europeans are the ones which are, to a certain extent, even in a worse situation than the Americans banks, because the Americans banks have had rescue packages, because the US has moved quickly, in order to prevent the crisis—in order to manage the crisis. The Europeans can’t agree on what to do, and this is highly, highly negative for the market.

We are in a global recession. The industrial index in the United States in the month of September fell 43 percent. Now, that is an indication.

There also is another indicator which is very important, and we should look at that, is the commercial paper, that yesterday, the Federal Reserve intervened on the market and decided to take on commercial papers. Now, commercial papers is what big companies use in order to cover short-term operations which are related to the production of whatever they produce, so this is where the industry basically borrows money from banks. Now, this commercial paper market froze, literally froze, in the last week. So, big corporations can’t make—people that actually operate on the industrial level could not get cash, could not get money, in order to run the everyday business. So this is why the Fed intervened. So, now, what the Fed is doing is acting as a clearinghouse between banks and the industry. Banks put money in the Fed, and the Fed used this money to discount commercial papers coming from the industry. Now, that is an indication that we are going really into deep recession, because the moment in which the industry can’t get cash moved is the moment in which they will stop producing.

The same phenomenon is happening in Europe. I mean, we have a drop, a drastic drop, in production, and we are already seeing people being laid off. So we’ll have an increase in unemployment in European countries, where unemployment is already very high.

Discussion with Loretta Napoleoni and Amy Goodman.

Loretta Napoleoni, Economist, Rome, author of Rogue Economics: Capitalism’s New Reality.

- from democracynow. 8 Oct 2008

How AIG spent bailout money

AIG Execs Held Luxury Vacation Days After $85B Taxpayer Bailout
On Capitol Hill, the House Oversight Committee continued hearings into the financial crisis with testimony from executives of the trouble mortgage giant AIG. Investigators revealed AIG executives held a week-long retreat at a luxury resort just days after receiving an $85 billion taxpayer bailout last month. The $440,000 vacation included $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 in spa charges. Democratic Congress member Elijah Cummings of Maryland took issue with the timing of the retreat.

Rep. Elijah Cummings: “We contacted the resort where AIG held this week-long event, and we requested copies of AIG’s bills. We learned that AIG spent nearly half-a-million dollars in a single week at the—at this hotel. Now, this was right after the bailout.”

AIG has already used up $61 billion of its $85 billion government loan.

- from Democracy Now

Its free money. Let them enjoy their double lottery.
Poor American citizens.

What happened to President Jimmy Carter’s solar panels

In 1979, Jimmy Carter, in a forward-looking move, installed solar panels in the roof of the White House. This symbolic installation was taken down in 1986 during the Reagan presidency. In 1991, Unity College, an environmentally centered college in Maine acquired the panels and later installed them on their cafeteria.

In “A Road not Taken”, swiss artists Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller travel back in time and, following the route the panels took, interview those involved in the solar panel decisions, in the oil crisis of the time, and in the way that that moment presaged our own era. The documentary essay is still in work and will be about 70 minutes long.

- from huffingtonpost. 27 Jan 2009

World’s largest carbon footprint

Oh how we love to hate the filthy rich–even more so in these tough economic times. While the rest of us mere mortals are struggling to make ends meet, the hyper-rich live by the motto “if you’ve got it, flaunt.” And they DO! Jet-setting with their globe-trotting lifestyles, multiple homes, fleets of gas-guzzling cars, private planes, and excessive toys designed only for the elite. As for climate control and environmental concerns–ignorance is bliss! Some super-rich are too busy indulging to stop and measure (or even worry) about their carbon footprint. Here are seven eco-sinners we’d like to see green up their act ASAP.

1. David Beckham and his Carbon Footprint

Soccer’s mega-star gets a red card on the green front. Becks’ over-the-top fabulous-ness earned him yet another honor: the world’s largest carbon footprint, according to Carbon Trust, a green group based in the UK. Just Becks’ lifestyle alone puts out a staggering 163 tons of carbon dioxide. In 2007 Becks flew 250,000 miles–jetting off to play soccer games worldwide and fulfill his advertising contracts. Add to that his wife’s seemingly daily travels to different shopping locales worldwide and you get one hefty carbon footprint. Besides their penchant for private planes and endless globe-trotting escapades, Becks and Posh also fuel multiple estates as well as 15 vehicles, including a Hummer, an Aston-Martin, 2 Ferraris, and a Lamborghini. Plus, let’s not forget Posh’s artificial enhancements…destined to end up and slowly decompose in some lucky landfill.

2. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and the World’s Largest Private Jet

The Saudi Prince is worth an estimated $17 billion. Besides being the 20th richest person on the planet, he now owns the world’s largest private jet. Nicknamed “the Palace in the Sky,” the A380 jumbo-jet has over 6,400 square feet of floor space. Although the Prince won’t get his winged mansion until 2010, it’s sure to be tricked out with all the latest gadgets. For now, the Prince has to be satisfied to play aboard his 282-foot yacht, or cruise around in one of his 300 cars, or simply roam the halls of his 317-room palace. But let’s not totally trash his rep–the Prince is a charitable guy. A favorite cause is funding centers of American studies. Now, if he’d only be inspired to fund a little green 101.

3. Madonna and Her High-Maintenance Tours

Green means money for Madame M. She tries hard to convince us she’s part of the über-trendy green club by spewing environmental speak and headlining Live Earth–but don’t be fooled by Mother Madonna. Take her recent Sticky & Sweet tour which earned $280 million. The 45-date tour–which included flights to 37 venues in just under four months–reportedly racked up more than 1, 635 tons of carbon pollution in travel alone–Madonna’s toll was 95 tons of carbon in just private jets, according to the Telegraph UK. The singer employed an on-the-road team of 250, including 12 seamstresses, 16 caterers, nine wardrobe assistants, a personal trainer, and masseuse. Not to mention the four freezers, solely used for ice packs to soothe the singer and her dancers’ aches. Plus, her annual $100,000 buying sprees on bottled water has most Greenies already seeing red.

4. Tom Cruise and His Private Planes

Words like recession or conserve don’t fly with Hollywood’s Top Gun. The mega-celeb, who’s worth a reported 250 million, can’t stop jetting around in one of his reported three private planes. Eco-watchers dubbed him “emissions impossible” and claim he spends $1 million a year on fuel. That’s the life of a super-rich romantic. Tom loves to impress his wife Katie Holmes with high-flying indulgences. On the couple’s first date, Tom served a romantic sushi dinner aboard his private plane. Then, there’s the story that Mr. Cruise sent a private plane to pick up organic groceries for Katie. And it seems the Cruise clan (let’s not forget baby Suri) pop up in a different city daily. They’re regularly snapped spending their cash on designer clothes (go green/shop vintage) and pricey kid’s toys. Not to spread the hate. But, The New York Post estimates Mrs. Cruise spent $14 million in just six months to support her lavish NYC lifestyle.

5. John McCain and all his Homes

The Republican nominee promised to take action on global warming on the campaign trail. However, the senator should first measure his own carbon footprint–starting with his countless homes. John McCain owns between seven and 10, (numbers unclear due to McCain’s definition of a single home). Environmentalists estimate his homes put out about 150 tons of carbon dioxide–that’s about 10 times that of the average American (jump here to reduce your home’s energy output). And we haven’t added in the energy used to commute between his homes in his wife’s private jet.

6. Elizabeth Hurley and Her Super Excessive Wedding

The actress makes her love of all things organic well known and even plans to launch her own line of organic food: But the health-conscious Hurley’s 2007 wedding (jump to green wedding tips) was a huge eco-disaster. She and hubby, Arun Nayar’s marathon nuptials covered two continents, four cities, and the Maldives Islands. According to The Independent, the couple jetted 24 of their closest friends from England to Mumbai, India, and then continued to flew 250 guests in seven chartered jets to Jodhpur, northern India. The environmental company Best Foot Forward estimated their wedding released over 228 tons of carbons. In addition to guests, flowers and three chefs were flown in. Add in Hurley’s flight to Milan for a dress fitting, and this wedding sure had environmentalists tearing up.

7. Tiger Woods and His Water Hazard

A water hazard is always a challenge on the golf course–even for Tiger. But, water on the fairways isn’t the golf legend’s only water woe. The Orlando Sentinel singled out Tiger as a major water hog on Florida’s elite Jupiter Island. He uses 129 thousand gallons of water a month on his $39 million estate (the average water usage is 10 thousand). The excess water is supposedly to maintain his elaborate landscaping. Good news: Tiger and his wealthy neighbours are searching for alternatives to the public water supply. One option is a personal desalination plant; which is considered eco-friendly.

- from treehugger

You are responsible for making them eco-sinners by paying your money to them.
Stop spending money to entertainment and sports.

Wall St. Crisis and the Fall of Berlin Wall

Naomi Klein speaking at the University of Chicago:

The credit crunch is spreading to financial markets around the world. Nearly 160,000 jobs were lost here in the United States in September. That’s not including losses directly resulting from the financial meltdown. Wall Street might be breathing a little easier since Congress passed the more-than-$700-billion bailout plan Friday, but there are no signs of an easy or quick recovery.

When Milton Friedman turned ninety, the Bush White House held a birthday party for him to honor him, to honor his legacy, in 2002, and everyone made speeches, including George Bush, but there was a really good speech that was given by Donald Rumsfeld. My favorite quote in that speech from Rumsfeld is this: he said, “Milton is the embodiment of the truth that ideas have consequences.”

The economic chaos that we’re seeing right now on Wall Street and on Main Street and in Washington stems from many factors, of course, but among them are the ideas of Milton Friedman and many of his colleagues and students from this school. Ideas have consequences.

More than that, what we are seeing with the crash on Wall Street, I believe, should be for Friedmanism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was for authoritarian communism: an indictment of ideology. It cannot simply be written off as corruption or greed, because what we have been living, since Reagan, is a policy of liberating the forces of greed to discard the idea of the government as regulator, of protecting citizens and consumers from the detrimental impact of greed, ideas that, of course, gained great currency after the market crash of 1929, but that really what we have been living is a liberation movement, indeed the most successful liberation movement of our time, which is the movement by capital to liberate itself from all constraints on its accumulation.

So, as we say that this ideology is failing, I beg to differ. I actually believe it has been enormously successful, enormously successful, just not on the terms that we learn about in University of Chicago textbooks, that I don’t think the project actually has been the development of the world and the elimination of poverty. I think this has been a class war waged by the rich against the poor, and I think that they won. And I think the poor are fighting back. This should be an indictment of an ideology. Ideas have consequences.

Now, people are enormously loyal to Milton Friedman, for a variety of reasons and from a variety of sectors. You know, in my cynical moments, I say Milton Friedman had a knack for thinking profitable thoughts. He did. His thoughts were enormously profitable. And he was rewarded. His work was rewarded. I don’t mean personally greedy. I mean that his work was supported at the university, at think tanks, in the production of a ten-part documentary series called Freedom to Choose, sponsored by FedEx and Pepsi; that the corporate world has been good to Milton Friedman, because his ideas were good for them.

But he also was clearly a tremendously inspiring teacher, and he had a gift, like all great teachers do, to help his students fall in love with the material. But he also had a gift that many ideologues have, many staunch ideologues have—and I would even use the word “fundamentalists” have—which is the ability to help people fall in love with a perfect imagined system, a system that seems perfect, utopian, in the classroom, in the basement workshop, when all the numbers work out. And he was, of course, a brilliant mathematician, which made that all the more seductive, which made those models all the more seductive, this perfect, elegant, all-encompassing system, the dream of the perfect utopian market.

Now, one of the things that comes up again and again in the writings of University of Chicago economists of the Friedman tradition, people like Arnold Harberger, is this appeal to nature, to a state of nature, this idea that economics is not a political science or not a social science, but a hard science on par with physics and chemistry. So, as we look at the University of Chicago tradition, it isn’t just about a set of political and economic goals, like privatization, deregulation, free trade, cuts to government spending; it’s a transformation of the field of economics from being a hybrid science that was in dialogue with politics, with psychology, and turning it into a hard science that you could not argue with, which is why you would never talk to a journalist, right? Because that’s, you know, the messy, imperfect real world. It is beneath those who are appealing to the laws of nature.

Now, these ideas in the 1950s and ’60s at this school were largely in the realm of theory. They were academic ideas, and it was easy to fall in love with them, because they hadn’t actually been tested in the real world, where mixed economies were the rule.

I’m here to discuss what happens in the messy real world when Milton Friedman’s ideas are put into practice, what happens to freedom, what happens to democracy, what happens to the size of government, what happens to the social structure, what happens to the relationship between politicians and big corporate players, because I think we do see patterns.

Now, the Friedmanites in this room will object to my methodology, I assure you, and I look forward to that. They will tell you, when I speak of Chile under Pinochet, Russia under Yeltsin and the Chicago Boys, China under Deng Xiaoping, or America under George W. Bush, or Iraq under Paul Bremer, that these were all distortions of Milton Friedman’s theories, that none of these actually count, when you talk about the repression and the surveillance and the expanding size of government and the intervention in the system, which is really much more like crony capitalism or corporatism than the elegant, perfectly balanced free market that came to life in those basement workshops. We’ll hear that Milton Friedman hated government interventions, that he stood up for human rights, that he was against all wars. And some of these claims, though not all of them, will be true.

But here’s the thing. Ideas have consequences. And when you leave the safety of academia and start actually issuing policy prescriptions, which was Milton Friedman’s other life—he wasn’t just an academic. He was a popular writer. He met with world leaders around the world—China, Chile, everywhere, the United States. His memoirs are a “who’s who.” So, when you leave that safety and you start issuing policy prescriptions, when you start advising heads of state, you no longer have the luxury of only being judged on how you think your ideas will affect the world. You begin having to contend with how they actually affect the world, even when that reality contradicts all of your utopian theories. So, to quote Friedman’s great intellectual nemesis, John Kenneth Galbraith, “Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his policies have been tried.”

This process of measuring an elegant perfect, beautiful, inspiring ideology against a messy reality is a painful process, and it’s a process that anyone who has tried to free themselves from the confines of fundamentalist thinking, from ideological constraints, has faced. My grandparents, for instance, were pretty hardcore Marxists. In the ’30s and ’40s, they believed fervently in the dream of egalitarianism that the Soviet Union represented. They had their illusions shattered by the reality of gulags, of extreme repression, hypocrisy, Stalin’s pact with Hitler.

I bring this up, because the left has been held accountable for the crimes committed in the name of its extreme ideologies, and I believe that it’s actually been a very healthy process for the left, one that isn’t over, that is continuing. But I think that the process of having to examine the unacceptable compromises that were made in the name of hard ideology, that they are paying off in the way the left today is being reborn and re-imagined.

You know, the most left-wing place on the planet at the moment is, interestingly enough, the first place where Chicago School ideology made that leap from the textbook into the real world, and that’s Latin America. And that happened for a very specific reason, as you know. This—in the 1950s, there was great concern at the State Department about the fact that Latin America, then as now, as it seems to do, was moving to the left. There was concern about what they called the “pink economists,” the rise of developmentalism, import substitution, and, of course, socialism. And, of course, this was a concern because it greatly affected American and European interests, because the crux of the argument of import substitution was that countries like Chile and Argentina, Guatemala, should stop exporting their raw natural resources to the north and then importing expensive processed goods to the south, that it didn’t make economic sense, that they should use the same tools of protectionism, of state supports, that built the economies of Europe and North America. That was that crazy radical idea, and it was unacceptable.

So, this plan was cooked up—it was between the head of USAID’s Chile office and the head of the University of Chicago’s Economics Department—to try to change the debate in Latin America, starting in Chile, because that’s where developmentalism had gained its deepest roots. And the idea was to bring a group of Chilean students to the University of Chicago to study under a group of economists who were considered so extreme that they were on the margins of the discussion in the United States, which, of course, at the time, in the 1950s, was fully in the grips of Keynesianism. But the idea was that there would be—this would be a battle to the—a counterbalance to the emergence of left-wing ideas in Latin America, that they would go home and counterbalance the pink economists.

And so, the Chicago Boys were born. And it was considered a success, and the Ford Foundation got in on the funding. And hundreds and hundreds of Latin American students, on full scholarships, came to the University of Chicago in the 1950s and ’60s to study here to try to engage in what Juan Gabriel Valdes, Chile’s foreign minister after the dictatorship finally ended, described as a project of deliberate ideological transfer, taking these extreme-right ideas, that were seen as marginal even in the United States, and transplanting them to Latin America. That was his phrase.

But today, we see that these ideas are reemerging in Latin America. They were suppressed with force, overthrown with military coups, and then Chile and Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil all became, to varying degrees, laboratories for the ideas that were taught in the classrooms of the University of Chicago. But now, because there was never a democratic consent for this, the ideas are reemerging.

But one of the things that’s interesting about the new left in Latin America is that democracy is at the very center. And, you know, the first thing that Rafael Correa did when he was elected president of Ecuador, for instance—well, the first thing he did was give an interview. They said, “What can we expect of your economic program?” He said, “Well, let’s put it this way: I’m no fan of Milton Friedman’s.” And then he called a constituent assembly. He created an incredibly open political process to rewrite the country’s constitution. And that’s what happened in Bolivia, and that’s what’s happened in many Latin American countries, because democracy is being put at the center of these projects, because there has been a learning process of looking at the mistakes that the left has made in the past, the ends-justify-the-means mistakes.

So, I think all ideologies should be held accountable for the crimes committed in their names. I think it makes us better. Now, of course, there are still those on the far left who will insist that all of those crimes were just an aberration—Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot; reality is annoying—and they retreat into their sacred texts. We all know who I’m talking about.

But lately, particularly just in the past few months, I have noticed something similar happening on the far libertarian right, at places like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation. It’s a kind of a panic, and it comes from the fact that the Bush administration adapted—adopted so much of their rhetoric, the fusing of free markets and free people, the championing of so many of their pet policies. But, of course, Bush is the worst thing that has ever happened to believers in this ideology, because while parroting the talking points of Friedmanism, he has overseen an explosion of crony capitalism, that they treat governing as a conveyor belt or an ATM machine, where private corporations make withdrawals of the government in the form of no-bid contracts and then pay back government in the form of campaign contributions. And we’re seeing this more and more. The Bush administration is a nightmare for these guys—the explosion of the debt and now, of course, these massive bailouts.

So, what we see from the ideologues of the far right—by far right, I mean the far economic right—frantically distancing themselves and retreating to their sacred texts: The Road to Serfdom, Capitalism and Freedom, Free to Choose. So that’s why I’ve taken to calling them right-wing Trotskyists, because they have this—and mostly because it annoys them, but also because they have the same sort of frozen-in-time quality. You know, it’s not, you know, 1917, but it’s definitely 1982. Now, the left-wing Trots don’t have very much money, as you know. They make their money selling newspapers outside of events like this. The right-wing Trots have a lot of money. They build think tanks in Washington, D.C., and they want to build a $200 million Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago.

Now, this brings up an interesting point. It’s an interesting point about the think tanks, in general, which has to do with the fact that it does seem to take so much corporate welfare to keep these ideas alive, which would seem to be a contradiction of the core principle of free market ideology—I mean, and particularly now, in the context of the Milton Friedman Institute. I mean, I could see it in the ’90s, but now, is the world really clamoring for this? Is there really a demand that you are supplying here? Really?

I think this points to a larger issue, and this comes up—has come up for me again and again in talking about this ideology, this ideological campaign. You know, is it—is it really fueled by true belief, and—or is it just fueled by greed? Because it’s not—the thoughts are so very profitable. So they are distinctive in that way, distinctive from other ideologies. And, of course, you know, certainly we know that religion has been a great economic partner in imperialism. I mean, this isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. But this is a question that comes up a lot. And I think it’s very difficult to answer, and it’s clear, certainly at this school, that much of it is fueled by belief, by true belief, by falling in love with those elegant systems.

But I think we also need to look particularly at this moment, who this ideology benefits directly economically, keeping it alive in this moment, and how, even in this moment, when everybody is saying, you know, this is the end of market fundamentalism, because we’re seeing this betrayal of the basic tenets of the non-interventionist government by the Bush administration—you know, I believe this is a myth and that the ideology has just gone dormant, because it’s ceased to be useful. But it will come roaring back, and I’ll talk a little bit more about that.

But, you know, I was interested that yesterday the Heritage Foundation, which has always been a staunch Friedmanite think tank, that they came out in favor of the bailout. They came out in favor of the bailout; they said it was vital. And what’s interesting about that is, of course, the bailout is creating a crisis in the economic—in the public sphere. It’s taking a private crisis, a crisis on Wall Street, which of course isn’t restricted to Wall Street, and it will affect everyone, but it is moving it, moving those bad debts, onto the public books.

And now the Bush administration has already left the next administration, whoever it is, with an economic crisis on their hands, but with this proposed transfer, they’re dramatically increasing that crisis. So, we can count, I would argue, on the Heritage Foundation refinding their faith, refinding their faith when it becomes necessary and useful to once again argue that the way to revive the American economy is to cut taxes, cut regulation, to stimulate the economy—and, by the way, we can’t afford Social Security; we’re going to have to privatize it, because we’ve got this terrible debt and deficit on our hands. So, the ideology is far from dead, and what we are, I think, seeing with this proposed monument to Friedmanism is really a way of entrenching it and making sure that it is always available to come back, to come roaring back.

So, I said I would talk a little bit about Friedmanism and the links to the current crisis. And, you know, it’s pretty direct. Milton Friedman is pretty much accepted as the godfather of deregulation. And this was—this ideology was the rationale for turning the financial sector into the casino that we see today. You know, Milton Friedman was clear about this. He believed that “history took a wrong turn,” and that’s a quote; it’s a quote from a letter he wrote to Augusto Pinochet. He said, “History took a wrong turn in your country, as well as mine.” And he was referring to the responses to the Great Depression. In Chile, it was the rise of import substitution and developmentalism. But in the United States, he was of course referring to the New Deal.

And I think that the Chicago School of Economics is properly understood as a counterrevolution against the New Deal, against regulations like Glass-Steagall, that was put in place in 1934 after having seen people lose their life savings to the market crash, and it was a firewall, a very simple, sensible law that said if you want to be an investment bank, if you want to gamble, gamble with your investors’ money, but the government isn’t going to help you because it’s your own risk. You can fail. And if you want to be a commercial bank, then we will help you. We will offer insurance to make sure that those savings are safe, but you have to restrict the risks that you take. You cannot gamble. You cannot be an investment bank. And a firewall was put up between investment banks and consumer banks.

And now we look at the way in which this crisis is supposedly being solved, and what we see, actually, is a wave of mergers in the banking sector, a wave of mergers with the banks getting bigger and bigger until ultimately—you know, the Financial Times was predicting today that eventually the United States will have three big banks, just like Japan does. That’s where it’s heading. And, of course, all of those banks will be too big to fail. So they all have this implicit guarantee; it’s not just Fannie and Freddie. It’s any function that is too important to fail has this implicit guarantee.

Phil Gramm is the person, you know, on the legislative side who did the most to create the legislative context for what we’re seeing right now in the financial sector. You know, I think everyone knows that Phil Gramm, most famously, recently is the one who said that America was in a mental recession and a bunch of whiners and all of that. And so, he’s not officially an adviser to McCain, but there is talk that if he were to win the elections, he would be Treasury Secretary. You know, I point—I bring him up because Phil Gramm was a Milton Friedman fanatic. I think you know this. In 1999, the same year that he led the charge to strike down Glass-Steagall, he also—Phil Gramm—pressed Congress to get the Medal of Honor for Friedman. When he ran in the—when he made his 1996 presidential run, McCain was the co-chair of his campaign. Phil Gramm was asked, “If you had to rely on a single person as your foremost economic policy adviser, who would it be?” And he replied, “Dr. Milton Friedman.” So we see the connections between deregulation and Friedmanism.

I also think there’s something else at play in the kind of politicians that are attracted to this particular ideology. You know, Reagan was the first really to embrace it, and Nixon was the great disappointment to Friedman. I’m sure you all know that. You know, he writes in his memoir that when Nixon was elected, he was euphoric. I mean, he couldn’t imagine an American president more closely aligned ideologically than Richard Nixon. But Richard Nixon insisted on governing, and he wanted to win elections, and he imposed wage and price controls. And Milton Friedman sort of had a bit of a temper tantrum and declared him the most socialist president in modern American history. But, you know, it was—so it was really Reagan who campaigned, you know, with his copy of Capitalism and Freedom on the campaign trail, who was the first person to really put Friedmanism into practice.

And I raise this because, you know, one of the things that we hear about McCain is that he doesn’t really know about economics, and so I think that makes us inclined not to take his economic ideas seriously, not to think he would be a really serious economic force. I think just the opposite. And I think if you look at his campaign platform, you see just the opposite. He wants to privatize Social Security. He is saying that in the first 100 days they’ll look at every single government program, and they will either reform it or shut it down if it is not serving taxpayers. I mean, they are talking about a sort of hundred-day economic shock therapy period. And I think it’s the fact that he doesn’t know about economics, and that Sarah Palin, I suspect, knows a little less, that actually makes them so dangerous.

And I don’t—you know, I don’t think it is—not to be too flippant—I’m sure that I’ve, you know, offended everyone, so I may as well just say bad things about Ronald Reagan—but I do think that, you know, that it isn’t a coincidence that, you know, a movie star president champions these ideas, or a body-builder governor, you know, who says, “Dr. Friedman changed my life”—I don’t know if you’ve seen Arnold Schwarzenegger’s introductions to Freedom to Choose, but they’re good. You should. YouTube them. But the appeal of these ideas, I think, to politicians who are actually in over their head on economics—and, by the way, this goes for military dictators, too, like Pinochet—who get control over a country and are totally clueless about how to run an economy, is that it lets them off the hook completely. It says government is the problem, not the solution. Leave it to the market. Laissez-faire. Don’t do anything. Just undo. Get out of the way. Leave it to us.

This crisis moment, of course, is going to play out in a lot of different ways. And, you know, the other major contribution—another major contribution of Friedmanism to the policy framework is not just deregulation, but privatization, of everything. And, you know, in Capitalism and Freedom, he lays out his wish list, everything from the post office to national parks. So I think it’s interesting to think about how this crisis will effect future plans for privatization.

And, in fact, it already is, because the next big bubble—and, by the way, this idea of bubbles is intimately connected to the idea of governments who think that their role is simply to create the context for maximum profit seeking—I mean, that you just get out of the way; anything that makes money is good, even if, you know, it’s entirely divorced from the real economy, if it inflates—your GDP is still going up. And the next big bubble—they went from dotcom to housing—is projected to be infrastructure.

The crisis, you know—and this is where Friedmanism becomes a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you neglect the public sphere and—because you have tax cuts and because you’ve derided the public sphere, and we certainly saw this in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, which was not a natural disaster; it was a disaster borne of a collision between heavy weather and a weak infrastructure. But then, that was used to rationalize really just erasing the public sphere altogether, closing Charity Hospital, the only hospital that treats the uninsured in New Orleans, closing down the public housing projects. Richard Baker, Republican congressman, said, “We couldn’t clean out the housing projects, but God did.”

Milton Friedman—and I start the book with this story—wrote a piece; it was one of his last pieces of writing, his last major policy recommendation. He wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal, saying that it was an opportunity, the fact that parents and teachers and children were scattered across the United States after Hurricane Katrina, an opportunity to radically remake the education system. Now, that—and, of course, turned into a voucher system.

Now, that neglect of public sphere that we saw in New Orleans is, of course, a national crisis. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that there is a deficit, an infrastructure deficit of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion, just to bring the roads and bridges up to safety standards. And the solution, up until very recently, that was being held up, was public-private partnerships, was privatization of essential infrastructure. You know this in Chicago, because the airport is one of the ones on the block.

But one interesting thing that happened today is that the biggest—the biggest test case for infrastructure privatization is the Pennsylvania Turnpike, which was on the verge of being handed over to a consortium of private companies on a seventy-five-year lease, and that deal fell through today. And I think part of the reason why it fell through is because one of the companies leading the consortium was Citigroup. And the idea of putting more essential services, more things that are far too important to fail, in the hands of the same people that have made such a mess of the financial sector suddenly seems like insanity. But on the other hand, the economic pressures on states, on the federal government, is only going to increase, right? Because it seems inevitable that those private debts are going to be transferred onto the public books. So, nothing can be taken for granted in this moment.

The other way where we—the other place where I think we see the legacy of Friedmanism in this moment is in the backlash to the Wall Street bailout, the backlash that essentially killed the bill in Congress, although it’s clear that it’s going to be revived. People got very, very frightened yesterday when the stock market had its worst day, and they called their Congress people with another message. And I just want to say, on that front, that it’s easy to conclude from that that people are just untrustworthy, and they shouldn’t really have a say in the economy, which is, I think, probably what Milton Friedman would say. And this was part of the impulse toward specialization and treating everything economic as hard science, because that means, you know that it’s out of reach of democracy. It’s not subject to any debate; these are hard rules.

Now, I think that the sort of volatility we’ve seen on the—in the markets the past few days is at least partially the result of the incredible recklessness of the Bush administration in dangling a $700 billion bailout, just free money, saying we’re going to do this, before they had any guarantee that they were going to be able to do it. So, of course, the stock market rallies at the prospect of free money. Why wouldn’t it? And then, when it falls through, of course, it dips. And I’m not saying this is all planned, but this sort of rollercoaster we’ve been on has just been part of this pattern of incredibly poor management, poor government, that infuses every aspect of this crisis.

And this, of course, is also part of the ideology, because the Bush administration, far from being an aberration, is really the culmination of the idea that government is the problem, not the solution. I think they really believe that and totally abdicate it, their responsibility to manage, to govern. The popping of the housing bubble was a surprise to no one. But the only preparation was a two-and-a-half-page plan presented by Henry Paulson that said, “Give me $700 billion, and don’t ask any questions.” That is not preparing, right? This was laissez-faire in action, a really scary kind of laissez-faire.

But the anger is, of course—the anger at Wall Street, this sort of—you know, there was a vindictive quality to a lot of what the Congress people heard from their constituents: “Why should we bail them out? Look at what they’ve done to us.” And it was Main Street versus Wall Street. And this is—you know, this is another failure of Friedmanism, because the idea of the ownership society was that class-consciousness was supposed to disappear, right? Because union members were not going to think of themselves as workers, because everybody owned a piece of the stock market, and everybody was going to have a mortgage, so they would think like owners, they would think like bosses, they would think like landlords, not like tenants, not like workers. Class is suddenly back in America, with a vengeance, and it is the result of this class war that was waged from this school.

Now, interestingly, there is another Chicago boy, and Barack Obama is responding to the market crisis by turning his campaign really into a referendum; though he wouldn’t call it a referendum on Friedmanism, he seems to be turning it into a referendum on Friedmanism. He’s saying that essentially what we’re seeing on Wall Street is the culmination of an ideology of deregulation and trickle-down economics—give a lot at the top and wait for it to trickle down to the people at the bottom—and that is precisely what has failed. And what’s interesting is that the more he says that, the higher his ratings go in the polls.

So I think we can see a couple of scenarios for the future. One, McCain wins, and it’s economic shock therapy. You know, the thesis of The Shock Doctrine is that we’ve been sold a fairy tale about how these radical policies have swept the globe, that they haven’t swept the globe on the backs of freedom and democracy, but they have needed shocks, they have needed crises, they have needed states of emergencies. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an outright military coup, which are the conditions in which this ideology had its first laboratories. It can just be a bad-enough economic crisis, a bad-enough hyperinflation crisis, in an electoral democracy that allows politicians to say, “Sorry about everything we said during the campaign. Sorry about the usual ways in which we make decisions, debate discussion. We’re going to have to haul up, form an emergency economic team and impose shock therapy,” usually with the help of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Milton Friedman understood the utility of crisis. And this is a quote—you know, I use it a lot, but I’ll use it now again, because I think it’s important—which he has at the beginning of the 1982 edition of Capitalism and Freedom: “Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

Now, because I’ve been studying the utility of crisis for this free market project, which I consider to be very anti-democratic, it’s really attuned me to looking for the ideas that are lying around. And I’ve been paying really close attention to people like Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, the Republican Study Committee, these past few weeks. And I have an “ideas lying around” file, which are the ideas that they are floating right now in the midst of this economic crisis. And a lot of them are familiar, but the point is is that they’re being repackaged now as the way out of this economic crisis. So, it’s suspending the capital gains tax, getting rid of the post-Enron regulations, getting rid of mark-to-market accounting. In other words, more deregulation and less money in the public coffers. And it is interesting that the way in which this bill—the way the senators were trying to get the bailout bill through the Senate, after it had failed to go through Congress, was by adding tax cuts, a package of $118 billion worth of tax cuts. Some of them are good, some of them are not. But it’s a deepening of this crisis.

So, we know that the crisis is coming, and the question is, how are we going to respond? I think there needs to be better ideas lying around. I think the Milton Friedman Institute is about keeping the same old ideas that have been recycled so many times, that actually make these public crises worse, making sure that they are the ones that are ready and available whenever the next crisis hits. I think that is what—at its core, that’s what so many of the right-wing think tanks are for, and that’s what the Institute is for. And I think that is a waste of the fine minds at this university. I think it is a waste of your minds, your creativity, because all of these crises—climate change, the casino that is contemporary capitalism—all of these crises do demand answers, do demand actions. They are messages, telling us that the system is broken. And instead of actual solutions, we’re throwing ideology, very profitable ideology, at these problems. So we need better ideas lying around.

We need better ideas responding to what a Barack Obama presidency would absolutely face. As soon as he comes to office, “Yes, you can” turns into “No, you can’t; we’re broke.” No green jobs, no alternative energy, no healthcare for everyone. You know, his plan for—to give healthcare to every child in America costs $80 billion. Bailing out AIG cost $85 billion. They’re spending that money. They’re spending those promises. So, the people who are going to say, “No, you can’t,” who are going to use this crisis to shut down hope, to shut down possibility, are ready.

And I think it would be so wonderful to have the brilliant young economists of the University of Chicago—I don’t know if any of them bothered to come out tonight—but to have your minds at work meeting this crisis. We need you. We need open minds. We need flexible minds, as creative as possible. The Milton Friedman Institute, in its name and essence, is about trying to recapture a moment of ideological certainty that has long passed. It has long passed because reality has intervened. It was fun when it was all abstract. It was fun when it was all in the realm of promise and possibility. But we are well past that. Please, don’t retreat into your sacred texts. Join us in the real world.

Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She was speaking at the University of Chicago against the naming of the economics institute there, the Milton Friedman Institute, invited by a group of faculty.

- from democracynow. 6 Oct 2008

Protecting nuclear secrets

A nuclear industry worker who tried to sell uranium enrichment technology to NATO ally France pleaded guilty on Monday to illegally disclosing restricted information, the Justice Department said.

Roy Lynn Oakley, who worked at a facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee that had formerly been used to produce highly enriched uranium, sought to sell equipment and information for $200,000 to representatives of the French government in 2006, according to his plea agreement with federal prosecutors.

Under the plea agreement, Oakley, 67, would be sentenced to a six-year prison term at a hearing scheduled for May 14.

- from reuters. 26 Jan 2009

Eating frog

The world’s frogs face yet another threat to their survival: overeating by humans.

A global team of researchers has estimated that the international trade in frog meat represents 200 million to 1 billion frogs eaten each year, or about 11,000 tons of frog meat.

The team analyzed commodity-trading data from the United Nations to obtain the best possible estimates of the international frog leg trade.

The largest destination for frog legs is, predictably, France. “Most people would probably be surprised that the U.S. is a very close second,” said study author Corey Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Indonesia is the largest exporter by far. But international trade is only part of the picture. The researchers estimate that the domestic consumption of frogs in Indonesia dwarfs the nation’s exports by at least two- to seven-fold.

The threat from human consumption sits against the background of global amphibian decline. At least 30 percent of all amphibian species are threatened with extinction.

In an earlier study, the researchers analyzed data showing that habitat loss is by far the greatest contributor to decline. Disease and global warming are additional threats. But the contribution from hunting has been underestimated, the researchers suggest.

- from discovery. 27 Jan 2009

Five Tidal Power Projects

A shortlist of proposed plans to generate electricity from the power of the tides in the Severn estuary has been unveiled by the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change.

UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has also announced £500,000 [US $702,000] of new funding to further develop early-stage technologies like tidal reefs and fences. The progress of these technologies will be considered before decisions are taken whether to go ahead with a Severn tidal power scheme.

The tides in the Severn estuary are the second highest in the world. The largest proposal being taken forward has the potential to generate nearly 5% of the UK’s electricity from this domestic, low carbon and sustainable source.

The proposed shortlist is includes:

1. Cardiff Weston Barrage: A barrage crossing the Severn estuary from Brean Down, near Weston super Mare to Lavernock Point, near Cardiff. Its estimated capacity is over 8.6 gigawatts (GW).
2. Shoots Barrage: Further upstream of the Cardiff Weston scheme. Capacity of 1.05 GW, similar to a large fossil fuel plant.
3. Beachley Barrage: The smallest barrage on the proposed shortlist, just above the Wye River. It could generate 625 MW.
4. Bridgwater Bay Lagoon: Lagoons are radical new proposals which impound a section of the estuary without damming it. This plan is sited on the English shore between east of Hinkley Point and Weston super Mare. It could generate 1.36 GW.
5. Fleming Lagoon: An impoundment on the Welsh shore of the estuary between Newport and the Severn road crossings. It too could generate 1.36 GW.

- from renewableenergyworld. 27 Jan 2009

Robert Johnson on bailout

On Capitol Hill, the House is preparing to vote again on the revised $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan after rejecting a similar bill on Monday. Congressional leaders spent Thursday lobbying colleagues to vote for the revised legislation, which was approved by the Senate in a 74-to-25 vote Wednesday night.

All 432 seats in the House are up for election next month, and many “no” votes on Monday reflected lawmakers’ fears of a voter backlash for the unpopular bill. On the other hand, the Senate, where only one-third of the 100 members are up for reelection, voted overwhelmingly to back the deal.

Now, both Democratic and Republican leaders, along with a multitude of lobbyists, bankers, brokers and businessmen, are pressuring lawmakers in a second effort to pass the legislation.

An array of “pork barrel” projects have been inserted into the legislation to win support from opponents in today’s House vote. The provisions include an extension of tax rebates to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on rum duties; lifting a thirty-nine-cent import tax on shafts used for wooden arrows; tax breaks for film companies that produce movies in the United States; and many more.

It’s unclear whether the earmarks and the pressure from congressional leaders has mustered enough support. On Monday, 133 Republicans and ninety-five Democrats rejected the bailout. A net total of at least a dozen must change their vote, or the bill faces a second defeat. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would not permit a repeat of Monday and would cancel today’s vote rather than watch the measure fall again.

This bill, five weeks before an election, is illustrating for the American people, when there are two currencies of power—votes and money—that even at this time, when the power of votes is at its cyclical high, meaning just before the election, they are almost laughing at the American people, in the—by the nature and structure of this bill. This is a very sad result.

Robert Johnson: what I would say, use the crisis anxiety of the market fragileness to, how would I say, accomplish their aims on behalf of money and do no service for the public. We have no mortgage relief in this bill whatsoever. As a matter of fact, the Black Caucus, some housing advocates and the AFL-CIO spent the night negotiating with Barney Frank’s staff to take out provisions that made mortgage relief harder. Now, I will say Barney Frank’s staff was working very hard to do that—they’re on the same side—but on the Senate side, somebody snuck that in on page 61 of the bill.

There was a provision, that made it more difficult to get mortgage relief than under existing law, put in that bill at that time. But there are many other provisions of this bill.

They always say in the headlines now, it was “heads they win, tails you lose,” like that’s something looking backwards. It’s heads, Wall Street won yesterday; tails, the taxpayer lose now. But the structure of this bill, which depends upon buying overpriced assets, means heads, tomorrow, in a recovery, the banking industry wins again, and the population, the taxpayers who supported them in this bill, don’t go with them.

They could have done preferred stock injections, like Buffett did for Goldman Sachs, and instead, they said, “Trust me,” so that Hank Paulson could overpay and leave the taxpayer with no rights to recoup the losses in the recovery. I’ve seen Mr. Buffett on Charlie Rose the last couple of nights, and I’m absolutely amazed that he is so supportive. I know he’s had great success trusting in management, but Berkshire Hathaway investors are being taken care of much better than US taxpayers at this time.

The New York Times has an article today, a fascinating look at how this crisis unraveled, and they claim that back in 2004, it was Paulson himself, who, as head of Goldman Sachs at that time, had meetings with all the other major investment banks and the Securities and Exchange Commission and convinced the SEC to allow them to reduce the amount of money that they kept in reserves to back up any debt that they had, in essence, that he pushed the SEC to reduce regulation and allow them to take the risks that ended them up where they are today.

Robert Johnson: Investment bankers were trying to relieve constraints, diminish capital and give themselves the freedom to take more leverage, and that is a very significant part of why we’re in this mess today.

Secretary Paulson who made the call to let Lehman Brothers go bankrupt, that led to the very, very violent restructuring of AIG with taxpayers’ money, which led to the crisis that led to this bailout bill. I believe, when people take the zoom lens out and look at the history of this bill, they will look at Henry Paulson as being the person who made the critical error that has sent us not only into a national, but a worldwide, credit freeze right now. He’s got a lot of work to do to earn his reputation back with the taxpayers’ $700 billion in the next chapter, and I am nowhere near as comfortable as Warren Buffett is about having him be the person to do that

What I would like to see in this bill, I would like to have seen the money injected as capital infusion by buying preferred stock into the banks, so that the taxpayer would retain some rights, existing stockholders would be deluded. Existing stockholders, after all, are the owners of the companies that made this mess. Then, in the recovery, the Treasury could make back as much as, some estimate, $300 billion on that stock ownership, instead of having those existing stockholders make that money.

Secondly, and perhaps a place where we should have started, was the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation acknowledging the overhang of these—and unaffordability of all these mortgages and developing a restructuring, which, by the way, would raise the value of the securities, these mortgage-backed securities, that are toxic assets sitting in all the banks.

I do believe we need a bailout. As I said the other day when I was talking with Bruce Marks, I do not think this is a synthetic or fake crisis. We do need to inject what you might call life back into the organs of the economy. There was a story this morning. The Federal Reserve reports that bank lending to small businesses is being cut off very rapidly. And this does not portend well for the economic health of every region of the United States.

But homeowner relief, some significant regulatory reform, equity capital injections into the banks, which, by the way, because of the use of capital and the leverage of capital, you get ten to twelve times the impact on the credit flow in the economy as when you pay—when you overpay for toxic assets as the TARP facility would.

I think it was a very misconceived bill. Paul Krugman, Joe Stiglitz, John Makin on the American Enterprise Institute, Alex Pollock, the American Enterprise Institute, Lucian Bebchuk at Harvard Law School and Olin Foundation—these are conservatives and liberals all standing around saying, “Why are you doing the wrong thing, Secretary Paulson?” And Congress went along.

It went up by roughly $150 billion for those kinds of special pork-related projects. Now, what you’re seeing is the Congress and the Senate are daring the American people to get mad and throw them out. As David Sirota said in his first book, Hostile Takeover, this isn’t about choosing between Rs and Ds; this is about a bipartisan money machine working against the population. They’re daring you. They’re daring you to turn out in five weeks and, in essence, support challengers against incumbents, because the incumbents are the ones responsible for doing this bill.

A credit crisis is a crisis of trust and confidence. This bailout does not contribute to the trust and confidence that we are practicing sound finance or sound democracy. There’s a lot of work to do. The rage of the American population is very, very valid right now.

Discussion Robert Johnson, Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez

Robert Johnson, former chief economist of the Senate Banking Committee.

- from democracynow. 3 Oct 2008

Spain Installed More Than 3GW of Solar in 2008

Spain’s National Energy Commission (CNE) this week estimated that about 3.1 gigawatts of solar power were connected to the grid from January through November 2008, said Gordon Johnson, head of the alternative energy research at Hapoalim Securities in New York City.

Since the Spanish program began, around 3.75 gigawatts have been installed there.

The 3.1-gigawatt number is an estimate, because only nearly 2 gigawatts worth of the installations have been registered with the government and connected to the grid. But the CNE expects the final number to be higher because it’s still collecting registration data.

At more than 3 gigawatts, the Spanish market growth far surpassed estimates by many analysts. Many had believed the country would only add around 1 gigawatts of new capacity in 2008.

- from greentechmedia. 16 Jan 2009

New Geothermal Power Plant in Costa Rica

Ormat Technologies, Inc. announced that it has  signed a contract with Banco Centroamericano de Integración Económica (“BCIE”) for the supply, supervision of installation, start-up and testing of Las Pailas Geothermal Plant, a new geothermal power plant that is to be constructed in Las Pailas Field, Costa Rica.

This is the second order for an Ormat geothermal power plant in Costa Rica for operation by ICE.  ICE has been operating an Ormat 18 MW binary geothermal power plant in Miravalles V since 2004.  Ormat has been actively designing, supplying, upgrading and operating geothermal power solutions in Central America since 1999.

The Pailas plant will mark the fifth geothermal power plant with total capacity of over 150 MW erected and upgraded in Central America by Ormat.  The new plant will use water-cooled condensers and will utilize the hi-performance, hi-efficiency organic turbine developed by Ormat for geothermal and recovered-energy applications.

- from ormat. 21 Jan 2009

Toronto’s EcoCabs

Powered primarily by pedal, Toronto’s EcoCabs also boast an electric motor that helps the vehicles hit speeds of 12 k/hr. They have no problem fitting into bike lanes, and their drivers can easily match speeds with other bikers to avoid congestion or collision. Last year’s pilot program yielded an occupancy rate of an impressive 90 percent. The best part of the Eco Cabs, however, might be its business model.

The Cabs are completely run on funding generated by advertising revenue.

The cabs in Toronto will rejoin the fleets of EcoCabs around the world that have already had success in countries like Sweden and Ireland. The EcoCabs have made debuts in over fifty cities already–let’s hope the global recession doesn’t swallow up the advertising revenue needed to power this great green idea.

- from treehugger. 26 Jan 2009

See the the picture how efficient the cabs are. India must redesign our pedal powered rickshaws like these.

Toughest wind turbines

Workers install a wind turbine produced by Multibrid. Multibrid is a German company that has been working on the development and manufacture of the offshore wind energy converter. Photograph Multibrid GmbH

After a decade in development, the toughest wind turbines ever built are ready to make their debut.

The machines are the world’s first designed specifically for the harsh and remote conditions of the sea and have been developed in Germany, by the French energy company Areva. The turbines have a new waterproofing system and a simplified and lighter design, which should mean they require fewer expensive maintenance visits and are cheaper and easier to install and maintain. The turbines will stand 90m above the water and have a blade diameter of almost 120m. At full power each of the 5MW turbines will supply enough electricity for 5,000 homes.

The offshore turbines in use today are simply windmills designed for use on land that have been taken out to sea. As such they are not optimised for reliability or ease of installation or maintenance, which drives up the cost of their operation. But, according to the Carbon Trust, a British government-backed company which invests in low-carbon technologies, driving down costs is crucial if the UK is to build the minimum of 29GW of offshore wind power needed by 2020 to hit the EU’s renewable energy targets. “Without urgent action there is a risk that little additional offshore wind power will be built by 2020 beyond the 8GW already planned or in operation,” it said.

In development for more than a decade, Areva has now unveiled plans to install six of the giant Multibrid M5000 turbines as part of the Alpha Ventus project, Germany’s first offshore wind farm to be situated 45km from the island of Borkum. They are expected to be in place by the end of the summer.

Turbines designed for use on land are relatively heavy and cost a lot to install and maintain. Areva’s design tackles some of these problems by simplifying the engineering, in particular the electrical generator behind the blades. “Coupled with a simplified, novel gearbox, that’s exactly the kind of innovation that we’re looking for in offshore-specific machines,” said Clarke.

The blades are reinforced with carbon fibre to make them as light as possible, and all of the mechanisms needed to change their position relative to the wind are enclosed to prevent sea air damaging them.

The nacelle, which contains the generator and major engineering components, is also hermetically sealed against the ambient air.

- from guardian. 23 Jan 2009

May be Areva got enlightenment.

Killing US trees

Old growth trees in western parts of the US are probably being killed as a result of regional changes to the climate, a study has suggested. Analysis of undisturbed forests showed that the trees’ mortality rate had doubled since 1955, researchers said. They warned that the loss of old growth trees could have implications for the areas’ ecology and for the amount of carbon that the forests could store. The findings have been published in the journal Science.

After ruling out a variety of other possible factors, including insect attacks and air pollution, the researchers concluded that regional warming was the dominant contributor.

“From the 1970s to 2006, the mean annual temperature of the western US increased at a rate of 0.3C to 0.4C per decade, even approached 0.5C,” they observed.

“This regional warming has contributed to widespread hydrological changes, such as declining fraction of precipitation falling as snow, declining snowpack water content, earlier spring snowmelt and a consequent lengthening of summer drought.”

The team, led by the US Geological Survey (USGS), examined data from 76 temperate forest stands older than 200 years, which contained almost 59,000 trees.

Over the study period, which stretched back to 1955, more than 11,000 trees died.

The researchers reported that the increased mortality rate affected a range of species, different sized trees, and all elevations.

“The same way that in any group of people, a small number will die each year; in any forest, a small number of trees will die,” explained co-author Phil van Mantgem, a USGS ecologist.

“But our long-term monitoring shows that tree mortality has been climbing, while the establishment of replacement trees has not.”

Carbon store

The change in the forests’ dynamics, the team noted, was going to have an impact on the forests’ ecology and carbon storage capabilities.

“We may only be talking about an annual tree mortality rate changing from 1% a year to 2%, but over time a lot of small numbers add up,” said co-author Professor Mark Harmon from Oregon State University.

He feared that the die-back was the first sign of a “feedback loop” developing.

As regional warming caused an increased number of trees to die, there would be less living trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Yet there would be an increased proportion of decaying trees, releasing the carbon that had been locked away inside the trees’ wood.

Warmer temperatures might also increase the number and prevalence of insects and diseases that attack trees, the team added.

They used the example of recent outbreaks of tree-killing bark beetles in the US, which have been linked to a rise in temperatures.

Another member of the team, Dr Nate Stephenson, said increasing tree deaths could indicate a forest that was vulnerable to sudden, widespread die-back.

“That may be our biggest concern,” he warned.

“Is the trend we’re seeing a prelude to bigger, more abrupt changes to our forests.”

- bbc. 23 Jan 2009

CO2 emission from US

The role of the United States in climate disruption is far greater than most people realize. Not only does the U.S. emit more carbon dioxide (CO2) than any other nation besides China, not only does the U.S. have one the highest per-capita emissions in the world, but the U.S. economy also accounts for a massive amount of emissions released by the rest of the world too. S&R has investigated just how much CO2 the United States economy is actually responsible for, and the results suggest the real emissions are 20% greater than official estimates.

Every product and service requires energy, and thus carbon. Commercial agriculture requires petroleum or natural gas-based fertilizers and diesel fuel for planting and harvesting. Manufacturing requires energy to extract raw materials, petroleum to transport those materials to a factory, energy to convert those materials into products, and yet more petroleum to transport the products to end users. Even services like housecleaning or website hosting have an energy cost, the former in the creation of the chemicals and electric cleaning tools and the latter for the server (a product with its associated energy cost of creation), the electricity used to run the computer, and the energy consumed in constructing the computer center that houses the server have energy costs. And in all cases, the energy cost to create the product or service creates carbon emissions.

Given this, the amount of CO2 that a product or service indirectly emits in its creation, transport, and use can be estimated. And by extension the total amount of CO2 produced by the combined products and services (gross domestic product, or GDP) of a nation can also be estimated. When the total CO2 produced by a country by the country’s GDP, the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic production can be determined. This is called “carbon intensity.”

The carbon intensity of the United States in 2006 was 0.52 metric tons of CO2 emitted per thousand dollars (indexed for inflation to the value of the dollar in 2000). For comparison, the carbon intensity of Iceland in 2006 was 0.31 metric tons of CO2 emitted per thousand dollars, and the carbon intensity of Russia was 4.54 metric tons of CO2 emitted per thousand dollars.

The fact that carbon intensity varies from country to country is a function of the country’s energy mix and overall productivity – more coal or oil burned for electricity or heating produces higher carbon intensity, and lots of manual labor producing valuable products produces a higher carbon intensity too. Large amounts of manual labor producing inexpensive products produces an extremely low carbon intensity, as witnessed by the very low carbon intensity of 0.10 metric tons of CO2 emitted per thousand dollars from Cambodia.

From carbon intensity, the amount of CO2 produced in the process of creating the goods and services that the U.S. exports – and that other countries export to us – can be estimated as well. The result is the following graph:

In essence, anything the U.S buys that says “Made in China” is part of the U.S. economy, and so the carbon emitted in the creation of that product belongs to the U.S. economy as much as the carbon emitted in manufacturing a Ford Focus in Detroit. Figure 1 represents the balance of carbon, imported CO2 from other nations to the U.S. minus the CO2 the U.S. exports to them, as determined from the nations’ carbon intensity. It’s clear from the figure that China contributes by far the most CO2 to U.S. carbon emissions.

In words, Figure 1 says that the U.S. outsourced over a billion metric tons of CO2 to the rest of the world in 2006.

In this case, U.S.-generated emissions as a percentage of total emissions attributable to the U.S. economy have fallen steadily since 1985, from a high of 97.8% to 79.3%. This means that the U.S. economy has offshored 20.7% of our CO2 emissions to the rest of the world at the same time the United States has offshored production, services, and jobs.

If the U.S. is no longer generating a significant amount of our CO2 emissions, that means that the official carbon intensity of the Untied States (0.52 metric tons per thousand dollars) is actually much higher. And if this is the case, that means the reduction in carbon intensity that many people are pleased about is at least partly an illusion. Figure 3 below illustrates how much an illusion the regular improvements in U.S. carbon intensity actually is:

Figure 3 shows an unpleasant fact – as U.S. businesses have offshored more and more of the U.S. economy’s CO2 emissions to parts of the world where the carbon intensity is higher but labor is cheaper, the economy’s real carbon intensity has actually worsened since it hit it’s all-time low in 2001.
These figures illustrate a vitally important conclusion – the U.S. economy demands a huge amount of CO2 emissions beyond it’s borders. The U.S. has essentially offshored its GHG emission problem to the rest of the world, turning their economies into dumping grounds for our own air pollution. Yes, they’ve been paid well for it in U.S. dollars that helped raise the standards of living in the affected countries. But this also means the U.S. has a responsibility to help those countries clean their dirty energy houses.
After all, wouldn’t you want your neighbor to help rake up all the leaves he blew from his yard into yours?

Methodology
S&R acquired the US GDP data, carbon intensity data related to energy production and gas flaring, and U.S. imports and exports from the data repositories listed below in sources and then performed the calculations that resulted in the graphs above. The Excel file of these calculations is available here (zipped Excel file) for anyone wishing to verify the calculations.
The EIA data on carbon intensity is only from the consumption of fossil fuels and flaring of gas – it does not include agricultural emissions, for example. In addition, the calculations are for carbon dioxide alone, excluding methane, ozone, HCFCs and other long lived greenhouse gases.
This analysis assumes that all units of production for import and export are equivalent in terms of CO2 emissions, while this is certainly untrue. However, given the large variety of imports and exports, and thus a large variety of CO2 emission profiles, S&R believes that this assumption is reasonable.
The estimates of imported (and exported) CO2 are equal the carbon intensity multiplied by the value of the imports, with the net amount of CO2 generated by other nations on behalf of the U.S. defined as the CO2 imports minus the exports.
Finally, all nations have data from 1992 until 2006, but only major trading partners have data from 1985 until 2006. This produces an error in the data from 1985 to 1992. Given that over 90% of all emissions are via major trading parters such as China and Canada, this error is believed to be relatively small.

- from climateprogress. 22 Jan 2009

Killer cars

In one year, it is estimated that 1.2 million people are killed in auto-related accidents around the globe. That equates to slightly more than 3200 traffic deaths EVERY DAY. These mostly preventable deaths, in casualties alone, exponentially surpasses the number of casualties from higher profile, more newsworthy, less common tragedies. Yet, the horrific daily toll receives little attention by political leaders and the media .

Here are several scary but true comparisons, measuring daily global auto deaths against higher profile tragedies which have been embedded into our collective consciousness:

1) Every day more people are killed in auto related deaths than in the 9/11 attacks on America.
2) Every day, about 3 times more woman, children, and men are killed in auto related deaths than in the recent Gaza conflict.
3) Every day, more than twice as many people perish in auto deaths than in Hurricane Katrina.
4) The daily toll from traffic accidents is equivalent to 15 plane crashes, each with 200 passengers aboard.

Why have auto deaths become so acceptable and media or political coverage on the subject marginalized? Why is the current waning of the auto industry considered a tragedy and the resulting thousands of fewer deaths this last year not applauded and celebrated? Why are we not seizing this opportunity to dramatically shift the focus to public transit and bicycle/pedestrian infrastructure? These are some of the questions that have been swept under the media and political rug, perhaps because automobile companies remain one of the largest advertising spenders, if not the largest, and oil companies the largest single contributors to recent political campaigns.

The number of auto casualties in wealthy nations have waned slightly, especially last year when driving decreased due to high gas prices and economic hardships, but not enough to compensate for the exponential growth in auto dependence and auto deaths in poorer nations. Still, In the USA, 110 people die every day (over 40,000 each year), not to mention the inefficiency and environmental degradation that results from the average driver hauling around 3.5 empty seats, vacant cargo space, and over a ton of metal, rubber, and plastic wherever they go.

Perhaps it is time to re-realize and re-invent our global methods of human transportation.

- from treehugger. 25 Jan 09

Please reduce your travel. Use public transportation facilities. as much as possible.

Bishop voiced opposition to nuclear power plant

23 Jan 2009:
A ranking Catholic bishop voiced opposition late Thursday to reported plans to revive the controversial Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Manila auxiliary bishop Broderick Pabillo cited “potential dangers” resulting from the plant’s operation to the health of residents in Morong town.

Government earlier said the mothballed BNPP could be rehabilitated in at least five years at a cost of $800 million, and may help in meeting the rising demand for power.

But Pabillo, who heads the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Social Action-Justice and Peace, said there is much at stake with the project, first of which is the danger to local residents.

He also said a major concern is the geographical location, at the foot of Mount Natib, a potentially active volcano.

Earlier, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz voiced opposition to the BNPP, citing the issue of disposal of nuclear waste.

He said the government should first answer the “most important of all questions” if it wants to reopen the nuclear power plant for future energy use.

For his part, Balanga Bishop Socrates Villegas said the construction of the plant was marred with irregularities.

“It stands as a mute witness of abominable greed and corruption and as a reminder to all Filipinos that such deeds that only bring untold suffering should never again be foisted in our country,” he earlier said.

Villegas warned that reviving the power plant would increase incidence of “unbridled and shameless graft and corruption.” – GMANews.TV

- from gmanews

OL3 still have safety issues

23 Jan 2008:
Welding working on the steel framework of the reactor had no welding specifications for an entire year. The contractor responsible for the welding had no qualified welding supervisors at the site. Tests to ensure the quality of the welding were not done. Evidence came to light that critical load-bearing welds had not been done properly.

Finally, after six months, Finland’s nuclear watchdog, OL3’s owners TVO are finally taking action. Finally, after six months ‘improvements are being planned in the safety culture at the construction site’. Finally, after six months ‘employees are being encouraged to report on shortcomings that they find in issues of security and quality’ (they had previously been threatened about speaking out). Finally, after six months TVO are to hold ‘a systematic evaluation of the security culture, including inquiries and interviews at the construction site’.

Is it enough? Finland’s nuclear watchdog STUK isn’t so sure and has been critical of the proposed measures. Language differences between management and workers are still causing communication problems. Proper training on nuclear safety is still not being given to workers. As late as October last year there was still no proper system administering mandatory welding guidelines and to verify the qualifications of welders.

The question must also be asked, what has exactly been going on at Olkiluoto if TVO is only now proposing these measures? What confidence can there be in OL3’s construction?

- from greenpeace

Kenya looking for 300 MW of wind power

18 Jan 2008
A Kenyan firm plans to produce 300 MW of electricity by 2012 by harnessing renewable wind power in the north of the country, its director told Reuters.

Turkana Wind Power has been studying the viability of wind power projects in the barren, inhospitable region for the last four years, Chris Staubo said.

“Full production will be in June 2012 but we should start production in June 2011,” he told Reuters late on Thursday.

Once completed, the project could meet about a quarter of Kenya’s total energy demand, which stands at some 1,200 MW, just slightly below the installed capacity.

The government is looking at developing “green” energy sources, such as wind and geothermal, to meet demand that is growing at around 8 percent a year.

The company plans to put up 360 wind turbines that will each generate 850 kw, to be constructed by Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems A/S. Each turbine that is set up will come online immediately, Staubo said.

The company plans to have a 426 km (265 mile) transmission line linking the site in Loiyangalani to Suswa in southwestern Kenya. From there, it will be fed into the national grid.

The Constant Gardner, the 2005 film based on John le Carre’s novel of the same title, was partly shot in remote Loiyangalani.

The 400 kv double circuit line will have the capacity to transmit 1,000 MW but the national grid can currently accommodate only 400 MW more.

Staubo said his company planned to expand production once the grid could accommodate more power: “We are looking at future development at the site … The entire network needs to be upgraded before you can inject more.”

Other companies were looking at the viability of wind production on the Ngong Hills on the outskirts of the capital Nairobi and in Kinangop in central Kenya, Staubo said.

But only his company actually had a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the government, he said.

The Kenya Electricity Generating Company produces most of the electricity used in east Africa’s biggest economy, using hydroelectric and geothermal sources.

- from enn

650 kW Lithographix solar array commissioned

21 Jan 2009
US National integrator, ThinkSolar, in cooperation with solar contractor Pacific Solar Energy, has completed one of California’s largest commercial roof-mounted photovoltaic (PV) systems. The 650 kW turnkey solar array for Lithographix is the first commercial array in the City of Hawthorne.

The rooftop installation at Lithographix’s 250,000 square foot facility near Los Angeles International Airport, features Schott ASE300 solar panels, selected for their durability and double glass encapsulation, Solectria inverters and a custom-designed UniRac ballast racking system. The array, commissioned on December 15th , is already performing up to standard and is expected to offset Lithographix’s energy demand by 30 %.

The array is the largest deployment of solar power of any U.S. commercial printer. ThinkSolar is a wholesale product distributor and project integrator based in Oakland, California. As a subsidiary of SolarMarkt AG, founded in Freiburg, Germany in 1985, ThinkSolar provides wholesale solar products, engineering expertise, market analysis and large-scale project management.

- from solarfeeds

World air traffic

Ever wanted to watch the movement of the world’s air travel? The density of airplanes coming and going is actually really stunning, as shown in this simulation by Zhaw. We can just imagine the incredible emissions from these flights. Makes you want to consider a staycation.

Staycationing is a new-fangled term for taking a vacation where you live. It’s an eco-friendly idea that invites vacationers to get creative and stay home while they travel. How can you stay home while you travel? Here are four ways.

- from treehugger

Melting Antarctica

Jan. 21, 2009 — Scientists on Wednesday unveiled evidence to suggest global warming is affecting all of Antarctica. The average temperature across the continent has been rising for the last half century and the finger of blame points at the greenhouse effect, they said.

The research, published in the British journal Nature, takes a fresh look at one of the great unknowns — and dreads — in climate science.

Any significant thaw of Antarctica could drown many coastal cities and delta regions. Bigger than Australia, Antarctica holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by 185 feet.

Previous monitoring has already pinpointed the Antarctic Peninsula — the tongue that juts 500 miles towards South America — as a “hot spot” where hundreds of glaciers have been in retreat since the start of the decade.

But until now the news has been reassuring regarding Antarctica’s two massive ice sheets.

Indeed, a common belief is that the icy slabs have even cooled slightly and possibly thickened, partly in response to the chilling seasonal effects of the ozone hole over the South Pole.

Not so, the new study says.

It calculates that West Antarctica has been warming by 0.3 degrees Fahrenheit per decade over the past 50 years.

This is even more than the Peninsula, where the average rise is estimated as 0.2 F per decade.

There has indeed been some cooling in East Antarctica, but this was mainly in the autumn, and occurred as a result of the ozone hole. There was also a period of strong cooling between 1970 and 2000.

But, overall and when calculated over 50 years, East Antarctica has warmed too — by an average of 0.18 degrees Fahrenheit per decade, a figure that the authors describe as “significant.”

“The sense of ‘Oh, it’s cooling in East Antarctica,’ is based essentially on the 1970-2000 period, and it’s warmed since then — although we don’t have a lot of data for the most recent period — and it definitely warmed prior to the 1970s,” Eric Steig, a professor of Earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, said.

“When you look at the big picture on that, the average [trend in East Antarctica] is actually warming.”

Put together, the average temperature rise for Antarctica is put at 0.22 degrees F per decade, the study said.

The work is based on a 25-year archive of observations by satellites measuring the intensity of infrared light radiated by the snow pack. These were buttressed by data from automated weather stations deployed around the Antarctic coast since 1957.

The paper does not venture any estimate about ice loss or predict the ice sheets’ stability, but says only global warming can logically explain the temperature trend.

“This shouldn’t cause anyone to worry more than they did before. But what it does do is kill off the rather silly and careless statements out there from some people to the effect that Antarctica’s cooling,” said Steig.

Such comments “put into question all the other science that supports the idea that there is warming and it’s human beings’ fault,” he said.

There could be bad news a few decades down the road, when efforts to fix the ozone hole bear fruit, added Steig.

“The hole could be eliminated by the middle of this century. If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world,” he warned.

The West Antarctic ice sheet, which holds enough ice to boost global sea levels by up to 19.5 feet, lies at an average height of about 6,000 feet.

The East Antarctic ice sheet, divided from West Antarctica by a mountain chain, has an average elevation of around 10,000 feet, which makes it not only bigger but also colder.

If it melted in its entirety — something that most scientists discount except only as a very distant doomsday scenario — today’s coastlines would be drowned to a height of 165 feet.

- from discovery

Thermal photovoltaics

A new approach to converting heat into electricity using solar cells could make a technology called thermal photovoltaics (TPVs) more practical. MTPV, a startup based in Boston that has raised $10 million, says that it has developed prototypes that are large enough for practical applications. The company recently announced agreements to install the devices in glass factories to generate electricity from hot exhaust.

In general, thermal photovoltaics use solar cells to convert the light that radiates from a hot surface into electricity. While the first applications will be generating electricity from waste heat, eventually the technology could be used to generate electricity from sunlight far more efficiently than solar panels do. In such a system, sunlight is concentrated on a material to heat it up, and the light it emits is then converted into electricity by a solar cell.

MTPV’s innovation is a method to increase the flow of photons from the heated material to the solar panel by 10 times compared with typical thermal photovoltaic systems, which could make its systems smaller, less expensive, and practical at lower temperatures, says Robert DiMatteo, MTPV’s CEO.

A conventional solar panel absorbs light from the entire spectrum, but it only converts certain colors efficiently. Much of the energy in the other wavelengths of light goes to waste. As a result, the maximum theoretical efficiency of a conventional solar cell is 30 percent, or 41 percent if the sunlight is first concentrated using a mirror or lens. In a thermal photovoltaic system, light is concentrated onto a material to heat it up. The material is selected so that when it gets hot, it emits light at wavelengths that a solar cell can convert efficiently. As a result, the theoretical maximum efficiency of a thermal photovoltaic system is 85 percent.

In practice, engineering challenges will make this hard to attain, but DiMatteo says that the company’s computer models suggest that efficiencies over 50 percent should be possible. The prototypes aren’t this efficient: they convert about 10 to 15 percent of the heat that they absorb from the glass-factory exhaust into electricity, which DiMatteo says is enough to make the devices economical.

The key difference between MTPV’s technology and other thermal photovoltaics is the positioning of solar cell and the heated material (MTPV stands for “micron-gap TPVs”). In his work first as a student at MIT and later as a researcher at Draper Laboratories, in Cambridge, MA, DiMatteo found that putting the heated material extremely close to the solar cell allowed far more photons to escape a given area of the material and be absorbed by the solar cell.

In a conventional TPV system, most of the photons generated in the heated material are reflected back into the material when they reach its surface; it’s the same phenomenon that traps light in fiber-optic cables. When the solar cell and the heated material are brought close together, so that the gap between the two is shorter than the wavelength of the light being emitted, the surface no longer reflects light back. The photons travel from one material to the other as if there were no gap between them. The close spacing also allows electrons on one side of the gap to transfer energy to electrons on the other side. (A vacuum between the heated material and the solar cell maintains a temperature difference between the two that is required to achieve high efficiencies.) Since the heated material emits more photons, the solar cell can generate 10 times as much electricity for a given area, compared with a solar cell in a conventional TPV.

That makes it possible to use one-tenth as much solar-cell material, which cuts costs significantly. Alternatively, it makes it possible to generate more power at lower temperatures, which Peter Peumans, a professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University, says is one of the key advantages of the approach. Conventional thermal photovoltaics can require temperatures of 1,500 °C, he says. The first prototypes from MTPV work well at less than 1,000 °C, and DiMatteo says that, in theory, the technology could economically generate electricity at temperatures as low as 100 °C. This large temperature range could make the technology attractive for generating electricity from heat from a variety of sources, including automobile exhaust, that would otherwise be wasted.

But Peumans says that the technology has a trade-off: because the heated material and solar cell are placed so close together, it’s not possible to put a filter between them to help tune the wavelengths of light that reach the solar cell. This could limit the ultimate efficiencies that the system can reach.

DiMatteo first published work on the MTPV concept in the late 1990s, but it has taken until now to engineer prototypes large enough to be practical. One main challenge has been finding ways to create a gap that’s just one-tenth of a micrometer across and yet can be maintained over the relatively large areas needed for a practical device. DiMatteo says that the company will improve the performance of the devices by making the gap steadily smaller, which computer models suggest will improve efficiency.

- from technologyreview. 21 Jan 2009

Forest death rising

On the US West Coast, forests are dying more quickly, according to a study to be published in the journal Science. Tree death rates have doubled since the 1970s, and global warming and stress due to lack of water are leading factors for the development, according to the decades-long study by forestry officials, the US Geological Survey, universities and the National Science Foundation.

The study examined forests older than 200 years old in the western states of California, Colorado, Washington and Oregon and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

Researchers ruled out air pollution and other factors for the increasing death rate.

“Average temperature in the West rose by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last few decades,” researcher Phil van Mantgem said. “While this may not sound like much, it has been enough to reduce winter snowpack, cause earlier snowmelt, and lengthen the summer drought.”

Warmer temperatures could also contribute to pests and diseases.

The situation was particularly stark in the north-west where death rates in coniferous forests had doubled in just 17 years, compared to 25 years in California.

The death of trees could lead to less carbon dioxide being cleaned from the air, resulting in more green houses and gasses and even higher temperatures.

- from earthtimes. 22 Jan 2009

Get your vitamins from real food

The Coca-Cola Company has been served notice of a class action lawsuit filed over what the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) says are deceptive and unsubstantiated claims on its VitaminWater line of beverages. Coke markets VitaminWater as a healthful alternative to soda by labeling its several flavors with such health buzz words as “defense,” “rescue,” “energy,” and “endurance.” The company makes a wide range of dramatic claims, including that its drinks variously reduce the risk of chronic disease, reduce the risk of eye disease, promote healthy joints, and support optimal immune function.

In fact, according to CSPI nutritionists, the 33 grams of sugar in each bottle of VitaminWater do more to promote obesity, diabetes, and other health problems than the vitamins in the drinks do to perform the advertised benefits listed on the bottles.

Moreover, VitaminWater contains between zero and one percent juice, despite the full names of the drinks, which include “endurance peach mango” and “focus kiwi strawberry,” and “xxx blueberry pomegranate acai,” among others. A press release for the “xxx” drink claims its antioxidants makes the drinker “last longer” in some unspecified way; in any event, it has no blueberry, pomegranate, or acai juice, nor do the others have any cranberry, grapefruit, dragon fruit, peach, mango, kiwi, or strawberry juice.

According to documents filed in 2007 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Coke acknowledged that “obesity and other health concerns may reduce demand for some of [its] products,” and that “increasing public awareness” about health experts’ concerns over sugar-sweetened beverage could affect the company’s profitability. That year, Coke acquired VitaminWater’s parent company, Glaceau. Also in 2007, CSPI sued Coke and its partner Nestlé over an artificially sweetened green-tea-based drink called Enviga. The companies claim Enviga burns more calories than it consumes, resulting in weight loss—a claim that CSPI says is not supported by the small number of studies on the drink’s ingredients.

“Coke fears, probably correctly, that they’ll sell less soda as Americans become increasingly concerned with obesity, diabetes, and other conditions linked to diets too high in sugar,” said CSPI litigation director Steve Gardner. “VitaminWater is Coke’s attempt to dress up soda in a physician’s white coat. Underneath, it’s still sugar water, albeit sugar water that costs about ten bucks a gallon.” VitaminWater typically retails for about $1.49 for a 20-ounce bottle.

“My advice to consumers is to get your vitamins from real food,” said CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson. “If you have reason to believe you have a shortcoming of one vitamin or another, perhaps take an inexpensive supplement. But don’t seek out your vitamins in sugary soft drinks like Coke’s VitaminWater.”

- from cspinet

Kyushu Electric to Spend $5.9 Billion on New Reactor

Kyushu Electric Power Co., the monopoly power supplier to Japan’s southwestern island of Kyushu, will spend 540 billion yen ($5.9 billion) to build a third nuclear reactor at its Sendai station.

The Fukuoka City-based utility today submitted a proposal to the governments of Satsuma Sendai City and Kagoshima Prefecture, the company said in a statement filed to the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Construction of the 1,590-megawatt reactor is slated to begin in 2013 and operations will start by March 2020.

- from bloomberg. 8 Jan 2009

Nuclear power is not a renewable source of power. It will not save environment from global warming. It produce more CO2 if we compare total CO2 emission from mining to disposal.
Nuclear power is the most ridiculous, dangerous, costly and wasteful way to boil water ever undertaken.

If you are an ecomomist

- from climateprogress

Geo-pressure to power UK

Bath, England-based startup 2OC unveiled its plan today to generate electricity for London by 2010 using wasted pressure in the natural gas pipeline grid.

2OC is working with the UK National Grid on a joint venture called Blue-NG to use turbines to take advantage of the enormous pressure released when sourcing natural gas underground before it can be pumped through pipelines. 2OC proposes that 20-centimeter devices called turbo expanders can generate energy from that pressure, and is planning to install its first turbine later this year in east London to generate 20 megawatts of power by 2010.

The method—dubbed geo-pressure—is expected to be used at eight sites during the next couple years, the company said.

2OC launched in 2005 with the goal of generating 1 gigawatt of power for the UK using geo-pressure.

Similar technology has been tested in the U.S. and Europe but has been too costly to be implemented. Blue-NG plans to add a combined heat and power engine to the device to generate heat and electricity, improving efficiency to more than 70 percent. The engine could run on a variety of fuels.

2OC also says the technology could potentially provide data centers, power plants, air conditioners or refrigerators with a cheap source of cold air because the temperature of natural gas drops along with pressure.

- from cleantech. 7 Jan 2009

Power from gym

An elderly community in Beijing’s suburbs has become an unlikely leader in green technology – turning to pedal power to generate electricity for the area’s poorest households. China’s officials have rolled out 3.4 million square metres of outdoor gym equipment since 1998

But in Donggaodi in south-western Beijing, six outdoor public exercise bikes not only provide fitness but also provide a viable source of renewable energy. Each bike is connected to a battery unit which can store enough energy to power a television set for up to ten hours. Battery packs are simply extracted and carried into a resident’s home, where they can be connected to household appliances via an integrated power outlet.

China plans to expand renewable energy capacity and reduce its reliance on cheap but polluting coal for over two-thirds of its energy needs.The government recently earmarked 350 billion Yuan (A$72 billion Australian) to be invested in environmental projects throughout the next two years.

- from bigpondnews. 8 Jan 2009

US bailout plan

“My fundamental complaint is that they have been sleight of hand to the point of broad deception to the American people, if you listen to the rhetoric of the President and others in what they’re setting out to do here. Even $700 billion will not save all the financial institutions. What we’re witnessing is the great deflation of Wall Street, literally, in which it will get smaller, less powerful; firms will have to merge or fold. And that process is underway, and it’s bloody. But he—as a result of that, he can’t bail out everybody. He can take a lot of assets off the balance sheets of crippled and insolvent institutions, but he can’t save them all. So, my view is that he has now put himself in the role of grim reaper for some and savior for others. And the process in which he chooses those is not exactly transparent to the rest of us. We’ll learn later, and we’ll hear, I predict, lots of screams and denunciations, because he will pick and choose on a plane that somebody is going to lose. That’s the banker’s side of it.

Of course, the other side of it is the one that I think matters most to the country—it certainly matters most to me—which is, what is the government doing, while it manages the shrinkage of Wall Street finance, to build a floor and stability under the real economy where people live—producers, workers, families? And the answer is, not much. And I’ve argued for some time that both parties in Washington, following the lead of the financiers and the Bush administration, have this backwards. Of course, they have to deal with the bloodied financial system, but the real energy and resources should go directly into the real economy in different ways, which is also contracting or in a recession, and so the challenge is to keep that real economy from unwinding as dramatically as the financial system has unwound. And banking is part of that, to be sure, but the heart of it is demand for products and employment and jobs. It’s helping to build at least a temporary floor under income, so that people can just cope with the ordinary costs of living. It’s a lot of things, which get a little rhetoric, but have gotten rather pitiful action so far. “, said William Greider.

Government needs to exercise its full powers in emergency, and literally take control of the banking system and the financial system and supervise it as it deals with the realities of firms that will not survive and those that can survive; husband, if solvent, banks and make sure they stay solvent instead of tipping over; and then use that power to guide economic policy for the country, that is, make sure those financial institutions are lending and keeping the credit spigots open for businesses, for families, for all of the uses that go on in our society; and then add the stimulus alongside it, and I mean major stimulus, to encourage all of those players.
…
Government identifies big spending projects that will be part of that stimulus package.

What you need to do is direct government contracts, spending, loans, all kinds of vehicles, to create, stimulate economic activity, which then has a sort of lateral effect in communities, and so forth and so on

There were a lot of bag ladies on street corners, myself included, who were telling people for two decades, really, that the political system was in the process, under intense guidance from financiers, of unwinding, literally obliterating, all of the hard lessons that Americans learned in the pain and sorrow of the Great Depression.

I’m talking about the New Deal rules and laws that imposed prudential controls on the behavior of the financial system. And a whole new generation came along that said, “That’s old-fashioned. We don’t need that anymore. We’ve got computers. We can do these things. And those old bankers in the 1920s who produced the collapse of 1929 were good people, but they didn’t understand what we understand.” And so, we got a, quote, “new architecture” for the financial system. And people have been reading for the last couple of years the gimmicks, the delusions, the fraudulent valuations that are built into that system now, still there.

the model that Paulson, the Secretary of Treasury, is taking is the Resolution Trust Corporation, which they created in the late ’80s to clean up the mess the government had also caused by collusion with the banking system in the collapse of savings and loans. Bank regulators closed down a lot of S&Ls that failed and therefore inherited their assets, which, in most cases, were property—houses, shopping centers, developments, and so forth and so on and basically, the taxpayers picked up the tab.

How to dispose of those assets? They created the RTC, which literally sold them pennies on the dollar back to the financial system, which had lent the money in the first place to start these projects. And so, it was not just a financial bath, but it seemed to me a scandal in its own terms. The same players who had helped gin up the reckless borrowing and lending in the savings and loan industry picked them up and picked up the ruined assets and profited again on the downside.

What Paulson is doing is—the bankers got stuck with all these rotten assets, which they created and sold to each other and to the world; now let’s take those off their hands, and they’ll be OK again. I’m not alone in saying that that’s a real crapshoot as to whether that works, first of all, because those banks, as I said, are going to get smaller, and they’re collapsed, and they may or may not start lending again. I would guess not, not until they see a vibrant economy again.

it’s profoundly illegitimate as an act of democracy to take the money from taxpayers and say to the villains in this story, “Here, here. Can we help you out of your troubles?” No rules, no guarantees that these villains will correct their behavior, no really serious effort to write into this legislation a sense of where the system goes from here that’s honest.

At this hour, I would settle for honesty. If the politicians in Congress and the officials in the Bush administration and a few people from Wall Street would simply tell the people the truth about the situation, what they intend to do with the public money, that would be a good start.

Discussion with William Greider, Amy Goodman

William Greider, National Affairs correspondent for The Nation magazine and the author of several books including The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy and One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism. His forthcoming book is called Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country.

- from democracynow. 1 Oct 2008

Some facts about coffee

It’s important to know that caffeine is an addictive drug. Among its many actions, it operates using the same mechanisms that amphetamines, cocaine, and heroin use to stimulate the brain. Relatively speaking, caffeine’s effects are milder than amphetamines, cocaine and heroin, but it is manipulating the same channels in the brain, and that is one of the things that gives caffeine its addictive qualities.

As adenosine is created in the brain, it binds to adenosine receptors. The binding of adenosine causes drowsiness by slowing down nerve cell activity. In the brain, adenosine binding also causes blood vessels to dilate, most likely to let more oxygen in during sleep.

To a nerve cell, caffeine looks like adenosine. Caffeine therefore binds to the adenosine receptor. However, it doesn’t slow down the cell’s activity like adenosine would. As a result, the cell can no longer identify adenosine because caffeine is taking up all the receptors that adenosine would normally bind to. Instead of slowing down because of the adenosine’s effect, the nerve cells speed up. Caffeine also causes the brain’s blood vessels to constrict, because it blocks adenosine’s ability to open them up. This effect is why some headache medicines like Anacin contain caffeine — if you have a vascular headache, the caffeine will close down the blood vessels and relieve it.

So, now you have increased neuron firing in the brain. The pituitary gland sees all of this activity and thinks some sort of emergency must be occurring, so it releases hormones that tell the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline (epinephrine). Adrenaline is the “fight or flight” hormone, and it has a number of effects on your body:

• Your pupils dilate.
• Your breathing tubes open up (this is why people suffering from severe asthma attacks are sometimes injected with epinephrine).
• Your heart beats faster.
• Blood vessels on the surface constrict to slow blood flow from cuts and also to increase blood flow to muscles.
• Blood pressure rises.
• Blood flow to the stomach slows.
• The liver releases sugar into the bloodstream for extra energy.
• Muscles tighten up, ready for action.

This explains why, after consuming a big cup of coffee, your hands get cold, your muscles tense up, you feel excited and you can feel your heart beat increasing.

Caffeine also increases dopamine levels in the same way that amphetamines do. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that activates pleasure centers in certain parts of the brain. Heroin and cocaine also manipulate dopamine levels by slowing down the rate of dopamine reabsorption. Obviously, caffeine’s effect is much lower than heroin’s, but it is the same mechanism. It is suspected that the dopamine connection contributes to caffeine addiction.

The problem with caffeine is the longer-term effects, whic