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  • Murdoch pledges a carbon neutral News

    Rupert Murdoch may own a hybrid car but he’s found an even more carbon-neutral way of getting to work: walking. Plenty of footprints, none of them carbon.

    He walked to work, even if it was only a short stroll from Fifth Avenue to Sixth, where News Corp headquarters are located, on the day he announced that his company was taking a leading role in the climate change debate. Not that he is about to grow a beard and wear sandals. He’s still got the corporate jet.

    Last week’s announcement that News Corp intends to produce zero net carbon emissions by 2010 was the emphatic sign that at 76, Murdoch remains as pragmatic, unorthodox and up-to-date as ever.

    Although his various newspapers have long been on the sceptics’ side of the climate change issue, for close Murdoch watchers the announcement was not surprising. Last year, at a corporate retreat at the famed Pebble Beach Golf Course in California, he invited Al Gore along to show An Inconvenient Truth.

    Last November, while in Japan, he announced his change of heart. "I have to admit that, until recently, I was somewhat wary of the warming debate. I believe it is now our responsibility to take the lead on this issue," he said then.

    "Some of the presumptions about extreme weather, whether it be hurricanes or drought, may seem far-fetched. What is certain is that temperatures have been rising and that we are not entirely sure of the consequences. The planet deserves the benefit of the doubt."

    The person most influential in the greening of Rupert is his son James, who runs Murdoch’s part-owned satellite television franchise, British Sky Broadcasting. James has always been portrayed as the leftie sibling. He did have a beard, and once ran a hip-hop music label. He drives a Toyota Prius to work and a hybrid SUV on the weekends, while his wife, Kathryn, works for the Clinton Global Initiative.

    James has led the greenhouse gas charge, turning BSkyB into a carbon neutral company. It was apparently this example that led Rupert to take the plunge and commit the whole global empire to greenhouse gas neutrality by 2010.

    According to Murdoch snr, the process – which was only announced this week but which has been under way for almost a year – has made good business sense. Reducing energy usage not only cuts greenhouse gas emissions but saves money, too. Admittedly, a media and entertainment conglomerate is not exactly a smokestack industry. But it is slightly surprising that its activities generated 641,150 tonnes of greenhouse gases last year.

  • Carbon peak set for 2015

    The report says the world then needs to at least halve annual emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050 to keep global warming in check.

    The panel agreed on measures to cut emissions, describing them as both achievable and affordable.

    "The assessment says that it will cost less than 3 per cent of the global GDP," said report co-author Dr Joshi Roy,.

    "So that’s really not very bad if you look into the kind of benefits that the world will be getting due to the lesser temperature. "

    The wording of the agreement includes an implicit warning that the planet will not cope if developing countries aspire to the consumer lifestyles of those in the West.

    Western nations are told to cut fossil fuel consumption and developing nations will have to find a cleaner path to prosperity.

    The final text will controversially include a paragraph saying nuclear power could be part of the solution.

    Germany tried to block this, but delegates said it was up to individual countries to decide.

    – AFP/BBC

  • Arctic ice to disappear completely

    A review paper by Serreze and Julienne Stroeve of CU-Boulder’s NSIDC and Marika Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research titled "Perspectives on the Arctic’s Shrinking Sea Ice Cover" appears in the March 16 issue of Science.

    The loss of Arctic sea ice is most often tied to negative effects on wildlife like polar bears and increasing erosion of coastlines in Alaska and Siberia, he said. But other studies have linked Arctic sea ice loss to changes in atmospheric patterns that cause reduced rainfall in the American West or increased precipitation over western and southern Europe, he said.

    The decline in Arctic sea ice could impact western states like Colorado, for example, by reducing the severity of Arctic cold fronts dropping into the West and reducing snowfall, impacting the ski industry and agriculture, he said. "Just how things will pan out is unclear, but the bottom line is that Arctic sea ice matters globally," Serreze said.

    Because temperatures across the Arctic have risen from 2 degrees to 7 degrees F. in recent decades due to a build-up of atmospheric greenhouse gases, there is no end in sight to the decline in Arctic sea ice extent, said Serreze of CU-Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Arctic sea ice extent is defined as the total area of all regions where ice covers at least 15 percent of the ocean surface.

    "While the Arctic is losing a great deal of ice in the summer months, it now seems that it also is regenerating less ice in the winter," said Serreze. "With this increasing vulnerability, a kick to the system just from natural climate fluctuations could send it into a tailspin."

    In the late 1980s and early 1990s, shifting wind patterns from the North Atlantic Oscillation flushed much of the thick sea ice out of the Arctic Ocean and into the North Atlantic where it drifted south and eventually melted, he said. The thinner layer of "young" ice that formed it its place melts out more readily in the succeeding summers, leading to more open water and more solar radiation being absorbed by the open ocean and fostering a cycle of higher temperatures and earlier ice melt, he said.

    "This ice-flushing event could be a small-scale analog of the sort of kick that could invoke rapid collapse, or it could have been the kick itself," he said. "At this point, I don’t think we really know."

    Researchers also have seen pulses of warmer water from the North Atlantic entering the Arctic Ocean beginning in the mid-1990s, which promote ice melt and discourage ice growth along the Atlantic ice margin, he said. "This is another one of those potential kicks to the system that could evoke rapid ice decline and send the Arctic into a new state."

    The potential for such rapid ice loss was highlighted in a December 2006 study by Holland and her colleagues published in Geophysical Research Letters. In one of their climate model simulations, the Arctic Ocean in September became nearly ice-free between 2040 and 2050.

    "Given the growing agreement between models and observations, a transition to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean as the system warms seems increasingly certain," the researchers wrote in Science. "The unresolved questions regard when this new Arctic state will be realized, how rapid the transition will be, and what will be the impacts of this new state on the Arctic and the rest of the globe."

  • Howard’s plan: move nation’s food bowl

    Identify new industries for north Australia: Taskforce members have also been asked to consider other new industries for northern Australia across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

    The Australian, 2/5/2007, p.6

    Source: Erisk net  

  • US Builds Nazi ghettos in Iraq

    Thus the Pentagon gives the lie to its own lie that it was peddling a week ago. No doubt we will soon find that this figure of 10 open-air prisons is itself a lie, and that the Bushists are actually constructing up to 30 such neighborhood concentration camps, as called for in the plans that Fisk uncovered.

    What will life be like in these "gated communities," as the Pentagon, with its customary dry wit, calls the ghettos? Residents will be fingerprinted and submitted to "biometric scanning" as the basis for identity papers which they will be forced to display to the armed guards stationed at the few exit points from the ghetto. In some of the ghettos, there are proposals being considered to force residents to wear "identification badges." No word yet on whether these insignia will be in the form of, say, a yellow crescent, or perhaps some further discernment to separate Sunni from Shiite in the great ethnic cleansing and enclosing that Bush has embarked upon in Baghdad.

    The Post story is breathtaking in the open acceptance of this brutal and highly illegal new plan — not only on the part of U.S. military officers, but also by the paper itself, which simply adopts the Pentagon’s Orwellian tag of "gated communities" and uses it throughout the piece, without quotes. The phrase is used over and over, repeatedly invoking the peaceful image of a prosperous American suburb, with its wide lawns, well-tended houses and gently rolling streets nestled safely and securely behind tasteful brick walls. This alternate reality — or surreality, rather — has already infected the troops being ordered to carry out this war crime: "They’ve been doing it in Florida, and the old people seem to like it," joked the platoon’s leader, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Schmitt, 37.

    What yoks! Schmitt’s remark came while his men were working — "under cover of darkness" — to place six-foot slabs of heavy concrete around the Ghazaliyah district. "Tanks and Humvees provided security for the cranes and forklifts being used to build what would be the neighborhood’s lone civilian checkpoint," says the Post’s embedded report. Yes, it’s just like Miami Beach, all right — a place where they might still have some memories of a previous application of this "counterinsurgency" tactic by a foreign occupation power. (See picture at right.)

    The story is also remarkable for the disturbing degree of infantilization it reveals among the soldiers and officers taking part in the imprisoning of Baghdad. Here’s 1st Lt. Sean Henley’s analysis of the situation in Ghazaliyah, according to the Post: "If we keep the bad guys out, then we win." Here’s Sgt. 1st Class Tom Revette’s take on how the "surge" has reduced the number of civilian corpses found on Ghazaliyah’s streets every morning. Instead of piles of bodies it’s "just onesies and twosies."

    Then we hear from Capt. Darren Fowler, who is eager to begin the forced biometric scanning of the area’s residents, not only to catch Henley’s "bad guys," but also to build up a neighborhood census — "something counterinsurgency experts say is an essential step in tracking population movements," the Post dutifully reminds us. For as we all know, "tracking population movements" is an essential part of any "liberation." How on earth can you liberate someone if you don’t have their biodata compiled and a record of their movements? What’s more, the intrusive physical cataloging of the liberated Iraqis "will also let soldiers compare the fingerprints of people who enter with fingerprints collected during operations," we’re told.

    And this will be extra neat, says Fowler, because "we can pull fingerprints off all the bad stuff they handle and run it through the database. The soldiers’ favorite show to watch is CSI. We actually get some techniques from them."

    So there you have it. While picking up onesies and twosies of dead bodies from the streets every morning, the guardians of the ghetto can herd residents through a single checkpoint, make sure they have the right eyes assigned to them by the database and are not "bad guys" doing "bad stuff," then maybe stick a Q-tip in their mouths for a DNA swab or spray them with that stuff that shows blood under blacklight, just like they do on that made-up show on TV where glamorous gals and dudical dudes dig around in corpses, cracking wise and flashing cleavage between commercials for luxury cars and hemorrhoid cream.

    Of course, that’s about the same level of insight and sophistication that the Post’s own war cheerleader Fred Hiatt brings to his dry heavings on the editorial page, so it’s not surprising to see it highlighted in the story. No doubt there are many, many American soldiers in Iraq who realize they are not playing tiddlywinks in a TV show, but none of these are quoted by the Post. Instead, the only dissenting voice is given to an Iraqi soldier, Maj. Hathem Faek Salman, who receives Capt. Fowler’s good news about the ghetto with the surly ingratitude we’ve come to expect from these ignorant barbarians who don’t appreciate being liberated to death by good guys doing good stuff like they do on TV:

    "This is not a good plan," Salman, 40, had said before the meeting. "If my region were closed by these barriers, I would hate the army, because I would feel like I was in a big jail. . . . If you want to make the area secure and safe, it is not with barriers. We have to win the trust of the people."


    Oh come on, Major Salman! If you don’t like the show, just change the channel! Anyway, this plan is not about winning the trust of your people or providing them with security and stability, since it will obviously do none of those things. It’s about bringing the death count numbers down a little bit in order to gull the rubes back home and keep the war — and the war profiteering — going on a bit longer.

    *

    UPDATE:  The lies surrounding the Bush ghetto plan for Baghdad are flying fast and furious, careening into each other as they fly around the media echo chamber. This morning, the Washington Post, in the story referenced above, reported the forthright statment by Brig. Gen. John F. Campbell — deputy commander of American forces in Baghdad — that "at least 10 Baghdad neighborhoods are slated to become or already are gated communities." The story, by Karin Brulliard — who was obviously embedded with U.S. forces and reported only what she saw and heard from American officials or in their company at American-led meetings — also gave copious details about the methods to be used in dividing and controlling the population of Baghdad, and reported, as noted above, that the ghetto-building plan was "part of the two-month-old U.S. and Iraqi counterinsurgency plan to calm sectarian strife."

    Now, about eight hours or so after the WP story appeared, we have the New York Times relaying some panicky PR backpedaling from Bush brass spokesman Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, a well-pedigreed mouthpiece who spent some time in the first Bush White House after stints in the magnificent feat of arms that was the Conquest of Panama and the free-range turkey shoot of the first Gulf War. Caldwell issued a written statement denying that the U.S. military has "a new strategy of building walls or creating ‘gated communities,’" reported the Times (which had the good sense to use quotes around the morally hideous "gated communities" term, and mentioned it only once in the story).

    The hook of the story is the announcement by Bush’s satrap in the Babylonian colony, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, that goodness gracious granny me, the United States will certainly not build a "gated community" in Adhamiya, if Prime MinisterMaliki does not wish it to. This followed mass protests across the political, sectarian and ethnic spectrum in Iraq after the Adhamiya story got out. Yet, as the Post reported earlier, the building of ghettos goes on apace in the city, with Brig. Gen. Campbell noting that some neighborhoods "already are gated communities." (Emphasis added.)

    So which story that the Bush Pentagon has doled out in the last few days is closest to the truth? That the U.S. is not building walled-up ghettos in Baghdad? That the U.S. was building only one ghetto in Baghdad, in Adhamiya, but now promises, really and truly, to stop? That the U.S. is only building a handful of ghettos in Baghdad? That the U.S. is building or has already built at least 10 ghettos in Baghdad? That the U.S. is planning to build ghettos in up to 30 of the city’s districts, as the Independent reported last week? That the building of ghettos in Baghdad is not part of the surge strategy? That the building of ghettos is an integral part of the surge strategy?

    Perhaps this could be job one for Bush’s new "war czar" (if he ever finds someone willing to drink that poison chalice): sorting out the overproduction in the Pentagon propaganda department, and try to get them to stay with one bogus story for, say, at least a week before trotting out the next one.

  • Japan and China negotiate Kyoto

     Beijing has not set caps on its rapidly increasing emissions, saying that rising global temperatures are mainly due to fossil fuel use by industrialised nations and that China is entitled to pursue the same level of prosperity that they enjoy.

    China’s top climate change official said in March that a national plan on global warming set to be released this month would include policies for cutting back greenhouse gases, but did not say whether it would give an overall national target.

    The two countries also agreed to cooperate on other measures regarding the environment including: – technical assistance by Japan on desulphurisation of Chinese coal-fired thermal power plants. – setting up an experimental model of recycling society in Qingdao. – joint monitoring of harmful chemical substances including persistent organic pollutants.