Liquid water found in the Greenland ice sheet could affect estimates of future sea level rise.

Click to enlarge. This drill rig was used to extract firn cores from within the Greenland firn aquifer. One of the snowmobiles used in the 186 mile traverse of the ice sheet to reach the drill site. Clément Miège, University of Utah Ph.D. student and Terry Gacke, Ice Drilling Design and Operations. Courtesy: Evan Burgess

Click to enlarge. Water from the Greenland perennial firm aquifer draining from a core extracted 40 feet below the surface of the ice sheet in April, prior to seasonal melt, with air temperatures 5 degrees F confirming water was retained at depth throughout the winter. Courtesy: Ludovic Brucker

Researchers at the University of Utah have discovered a new aquifer in the Greenland Ice Sheet that holds liquid water all year long in the otherwise perpetually frozen winter landscape. The aquifer is extensive, covering 27,000 square miles.

The reservoir is known as a “perennial firn aquifer” because water persists within the firn – layers of snow and ice that don’t melt for at least one season. Researchers believe it figures significantly in understanding the contribution of snowmelt and ice melt to rising sea levels.

The study was published online Sunday, 22 December, in the journal Nature Geoscience.

“Of the current sea level rise, the Greenland Ice Sheet is the largest contributor – and it is melting at record levels,” says Rick Forster, lead author and professor of geography at the University of Utah. “So understanding the aquifer’s capacity to store water from year to year is important because it fills a major gap in the overall equation of meltwater runoff and sea levels.”

Forster’s team has been doing research in southeast Greenland since 2010 to measure snowfall accumulation and how it varies from year to year. The area they study covers 14 percent of southeast Greenland yet receives 32 percent of the entire ice sheet’s snowfall, but there has been little data gathered.

In 2010, the team drilled core samples in three locations on the ice for analysis. Team members returned in 2011 to approximately the same area, but at lower elevation. Of the four core samples taken then, two came to the surface with liquid water pouring off the drill while the air temperatures were minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. The water was found at about 33 feet below the surface at the first hole and at 82 feet in the second hole.

“This discovery was a surprise,” Forster says. “Although water discharge from streams in winter had been previously reported, and snow temperature data implied small amounts of water, no one had yet reported observing water in the firn that had persisted through the winter.”

The aquifer is extensive, covering 27,000 square miles — larger than the state of West Virginia. It is similar in form to a groundwater aquifer on land that can be used for drinking water. “Here instead of the water being stored in the air space between subsurface rock particles, the water is stored in the air space between the ice particles, like the juice in a snow cone,” Forster adds. “The surprising fact is the juice in this snow cone never freezes, even during the dark Greenland winter. Large amounts of snow fall on the surface late in the summer and quickly insulates the water from the subfreezing air temperatures above, allowing the water to persist all year long.”

Why Studying Ice in Greenland is Important

The Greenland Ice Sheet is vast, covering roughly the same area as the states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah combined. The average thickness of the ice is 5,000 feet. In 2012, the ice sheet lost volume of 60 cubic miles – a record for melt and runoff.

The consequences of losing the ice sheet could be catastrophic. If all the water retained in the ice sheet melted, it is estimated that the global sea level would rise about 21 feet, says Forster. Although no one is predicting a total meltoff all at once, keeping an eye on ice formation, runoff amounts and how the water is moving is critical to accurately predicting sea level changes.

Until now, calculations of the ice sheet mass changes did not include a year-round storage mechanism for liquid water. Models predicted that water either flowed into rivers and lakes on the ice surface, into crevasses and subglacial streams that eventually run into the sea, or was refrozen within the ice sheet.

Discovery of the perennial aquifer will help scientists predict the movement and temperature of water within the ice sheet with more precision.

Forster says the reservoir’s exact role is unknown. “It might conserve meltwater flow and thus help slow down the effects of climate change. But it may also have the opposite effect, providing lubrication to moving glaciers and exacerbating ice velocity and calving increasing the mass of ice loss to the global ocean.”

As for whether climate change caused the aquifer to form, Forster says that’s not clear, but simulations of the Greenland Ice Sheet going back to the early 1970s would suggest it has been around for some time.

How the Study was Conducted

The previously unknown storage mode was found in the southeast section of Greenland, where conditions combine to provide sufficient rain and snowmelt to fill the firn with water, as well as high levels of snow accumulation that insulate the water from freezing during the winter.

The team used data collected by airborne and ground-penetrating radar to pinpoint the aquifer, and then took core samples on the ground.

Airborne radar imagery was collected in the area by NASA Operation IceBridge, which is a program directed at collecting images of Earth’s polar ice in unprecedented detail to better understand the processes that connect polar regions with climate change. Ground-penetrating radar and a roving Global Positioning System navigation unit also were towed across the ice in the same area via snowmobile, collecting data every five seconds.

Researchers found that the radar images from air and ground corresponded on both the depth of a bright horizon, indicating where there is a change in consistency of the ice, as well as the undulations of the horizon across distance of about 15 miles. This was confirmation that the airborne radar could map the aquifer just as well as the ground-based radar.

Core samples were taken with a 4-inch-diameter drill. Two segments were extracted that were saturated with liquid water – one from a depth of about 33 feet and another the following day about a mile east and at a depth of more than 80 feet.

Temperatures in the spring of 2011 were below average. Forster notes that, “because air temperatures were minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit during drilling and because surface melting in the area did not begin until June in 2011, there is no doubt that the water found in the firn had persisted through the winter.”

This research is an international collaboration among researchers at the University of Utah, the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Byrd Polar Research Center at the Ohio State University, Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas, and the Desert Research Institute at the University of Nevada, Reno. Forster and the Utah team were supported by the National Science Foundation and NASA.

Abstract

Mass loss from the Greenland ice sheet contributes significantly to present sea level rise1. High meltwater runoff is responsible for half of Greenland’s mass loss2. Surface melt has been spreading and intensifying in Greenland, with the highest ever surface area melt and runoff recorded in 20123. However, how surface melt water reaches the ocean, and how fast it does so, is poorly understood. Firn—partially compacted snow from previous years—potentially has the capacity to store significant amounts of melt water in liquid or frozen form4, and thus delay its contribution to sea level. Here we present direct observations from ground and airborne radar, as well as ice cores, of liquid water within firn in the southern Greenland ice sheet. We find a substantial amount of water in this firn aquifer that persists throughout the winter, when snow accumulation and melt rates are high. This represents a previously unknown storage mode for water within the ice sheet. We estimate, using a regional climate model, aquifer area at about 70,000 km2 and the depth to the top of the water table as 5–50 m. The perennial firn aquifer could be important for estimates of ice sheet mass and energy budget.

Citation

“Extensive liquid meltwater storage in firn within the Greenland ice sheet” by

Richard R. Forster, Jason E. Box, Michiel R. van den Broeke, Clément Miège, Evan W. Burgess, Jan H. van Angelen, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Lora S. Koenig, John Paden, Cameron Lewis, S. Prasad Gogineni, Carl Leuschen & Joseph R. McConnell published by Nature Geoscience. doi:10.1038/ngeo2043

Read the abstract and get the full paper here.

Source

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December 21, 2013

The Remarkable Path to Victory of Wayne Dropulich

Posted by Antony Green on December 21, 2013 at 08:11 PM in Electoral Systems,

American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans

By Dr Gideon Polya

27 August, 2013
Countercurrents.org

The horrendous financial cost of Israel to Americans has now reached a gigantic $40 trillion in today’s dollars. However the human cost involves the preventable deaths of millions of Americans – passive mass murder of Americans  in an American Holocaust inflicted by the fiscal perversion of traitorous Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist One Percenters committing $8-10 trillion to ethnic cleansing and active and passive mass murder of Muslims abroad in support of Apartheid Israel instead of keeping Americans  alive at home.    Zionist-subverted American Government support for Apartheid Israel in circa 2008 dollars totals about $40 trillion, the breakdown being  (1) $3 trillion (1948-2003), (2) $4-6 trillion (Zionist-promoted Iraq and Afghan Wars), (3) $0.7 trillion (Value of a Statistical Life- or VSL-based cost of  88,000 US veteran suicides since September 2001) and (4) about $30 trillion (one quarter of the VSL-based cost of 15.6 million preventable American deaths since September 2001). This is an under-estimate because it does not consider the millions of preventable American deaths before 9-11 linked to Zionist subversion and perversion of America .

1. $3 trillion cost of Israel to America, 1948-2003.

In 2003 Dr. Thomas R. Stauffer (1935-2005; a respected energy analyst, author, educator, consultant, and graduate of 144-Nobel-Laureate Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)), estimated that the 1948-2003 cost of Israel to the US was over $3 trillion in 2002 dollars: “Conflicts in the Middle East have been very costly to the U.S., as well as to the rest of the world. An estimate of the total cost to the U.S. alone of instability and conflict in the region—which emanates from the core, Israeli-Palestinian conflict—amounts to close to $3 trillion, measured in 2002 dollars. This is an amount almost four times greater than the cost of the Vietnam war, also reckoned in 2002 dollars… Total identifiable costs come to almost $3 trillion. About 60 percent, well over half, of those costs—about $1.7 trillion—arose from the U.S. defense of Israel , where most of that amount has been incurred since 1973.” [2].

2. $4-6 trillion cost to America of the Zionist-promoted Iraq and Afghan Wars.

The Zionist-promoted  illegal invasion of Iraq ,  the Iraq War, and the  Afghan War have been associated with a huge ongoing cost commitment of $4-6 trillion.  Thus Professor Joseph Stiglitz (professor of economics at 98-Nobel-Laureate Columbia University, chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001) and Dr. Linda J. Bilmes ( Daniel Patrick Moynihan senior lecturer in public policy at 144-Nobel-Laureate Harvard University) estimated a long-term cost of the Iraq war at $3 trillion in their 2008 book “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” [3].

However in 2010 Professors Stiglitz and Bilmes revised this estimate upwards: “Writing in these pages in early 2008, we put the total cost to the United States of the Iraq war at $3 trillion. This price tag dwarfed previous estimates, including the Bush administration’s 2003 projections of a $50 billion to $60 billion war. But today, as the United States ends combat in Iraq , it appears that our $3 trillion estimate (which accounted for both government expenses and the war’s broader impact on the U.S. economy) was, if anything, too low… There is no question that the Iraq war added substantially to the federal debt. This was the first time in American history that the government cut taxes as it went to war. The result: a war completely funded by borrowing. U.S. debt soared from $6.4 trillion in March 2003 to $10 trillion in 2008 (before the financial crisis); at least a quarter of that increase is directly attributable to the war. And that doesn’t include future health care and disability payments for veterans, which will add another half-trillion dollars to the debt.” [4].

Professor Michael Intriligator ( a senior fellow at the US Milken Institute and professor emeritus of economics, political science and public policy at the 13-Nobel-Laureate University of California at Los Angeles , UCLA ) has indicated a long-term cost of $1.5 to 2.0 trillion for the war in Afghanistan [5].

Dr Linda Bilmes (2013): “The Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, taken together, will be the most expensive wars in US history – totaling somewhere between $4 to $6 trillion. This includes long-term medical care and disability compensation for service members, veterans and families, military replenishment and social and economic costs. The largest portion of that bill is yet to be paid. Since 2001, the US has expanded the quality, quantity, availability and eligibility of benefits for military personnel and veterans. This has led to unprecedented growth in the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense budgets. These benefits will increase further over the next 40 years. Additional funds are committed to replacing large quantities of basic equipment used in the wars and to support ongoing diplomatic presence and military assistance in the Iraq and Afghanistan region. The large sums borrowed to finance operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will also impose substantial long-term debt servicing costs. As a consequence of these wartime spending choices, the United States will face constraints in funding investments in personnel and diplomacy, research and development and new military initiatives. The legacy of decisions taken during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will dominate future federal budgets for decades to come.” [6].

Pamela Olsen ( a President’s Scholar at 54-Nobel-Laureate Stanford University 1998-2002 with a major in Physics, a minor in Political Science, lived and worked in the Palestinian West Bank, worked as a researcher in Moscow, Siberia, and China ,  research analyst at the Institute for Defense Analysis, and the author of “ Fast Times in Palestine” ) has recently commented critically on the huge cost of Israel to the US (2013): “Israel’s cost to American taxpayers has remained high since Stauffer’s 2003 study. The US currently gives Israel an average of $3 billion a year in military aid, under an agreement signed by the Bush administration to transfer $30 billion to Israel over ten years, starting in 2009… And if, as many experts believe, the US would not have invaded Iraq without intense and sustained pressure from Washington insiders who advocate actively on behalf of Israel, this adds yet another dimension of staggering cost to the equation… The Israel lobby and partisans are currently gunning for a war with Iran with the same zeal they showed in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq . By all estimates, the costs of a war with Iran will be much higher than the Iraq war. In addition to the loss of life, analysts predict, for example, that if Iran ‘s oil production were taken out of the world market, gas prices would rise 25-70 percent… So now we are back to the question of why America continues to pour money into a state that commits daily human rights violations, defies US strategic interests, provokes rage and resentment among billions of people, competes with and crowds out US interests using technology subsidized by US taxpayers, and sells America ‘s military secrets to its enemies. The answer is simple and summed up well by professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer in their ground-breaking article in the London Review of Books , “The Israel Lobby” and their book “The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy”… AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is consistently ranked in the top two most powerful lobbies in Washington . And it is only one arm of the much larger, multi-faceted, and well-financed Israel lobby” [7].

3.  $0.7 trillion VSL-based costing of 88,000 US veteran suicides since September 11, 2001 in the era of the Zionist-promoted War on Terror.

There is growing concern over the high rate of US veteran suicides that constitute about 20% of the 30,000 annual suicides in the US [8].  Over the last dozen years, there have been roughly 20 US veteran suicides every day .i.e. 365.25 x 20 = 7,305 per year and about 88,000 since the start of the Zionist-promoted War on Terror in September  2001 [9]. This horrendous death toll of 88,000 dead US veterans linked to traitorous and racist Zionist-promoted  wars for the benefit of Apartheid Israel is about 3,000 times greater than the 34 US servicemen deliberately  murdered by Apartheid Israel in its1967 attack on the USS Liberty [7, 10].

It is impossible to value a life but one crude approach is through the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) which can be defined as the value placed on changes to the likelihood of death [11].   The US Environment  Protection Authority  (EPA) has recently estimated the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) at $8 million, this indicating the average social investment in hospitals, security, workplace safety  etc to keep a person safe. The VSL can be seen, for example,  as an accounting estimate of  the cost of life-saving government regulations i.e. a risk-avoidance-based cost of preserving a human life in a given group [12]. On this measure the assumed war-related suicide of 88,000 US veterans obviates a social expenditure of $8 million per person x 0.088 million persons  = $0.7 trillion.

4. A $125 trillion cost associated with 15.6 million preventable American deaths since September 2001, of which about $30 trillion can be attributed  to US fiscal perversion supporting Apartheid Israel .

About 1.3 million Americans die preventably each year, the breakdown being as follows: 15,000 Americans are violently murdered annually;  21,000 avoidable under-5 year old US infant deaths annually; 21,000 US opiate drug-related deaths annually from US restoration and protection of the Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium industry; 30,000 Americans suicide annually, with 1 in 5 being US veterans; 31,000 gun-related US deaths annually; 33,000Americans killed by motor vehicles each year; 45,000 US deaths annually  from lack of medical insurance; 70,000 Americans die annually from air pollution (e.g. from coal burning, vehicle exhaust, carbon burning in general);  75,000 American alcohol-related deaths annually; 225,000 deaths per year in the US from iatrogenic (medical personnel-related) causes ; 300,000 Americans die from obesity-related causes; and 443,000 Americans die from smoking-related causes (roughly 1 in 5 of all deaths and 49,000 or about 10% from passive smoking) [13, 14].  Some qualifications can be offered e.g. it should be noted that some of these areas overlap e.g. homicides and suicides overlap with gun-related deaths, and smoking-related deaths would take a long time  to stop after nationally legislated cessation of smoking.

This huge carnage of 15.6 million preventable American deaths since September 2001 must be seen in the context of a fiscal perversion outlined in section #1-3 above in which $8-10 trillion in roughly today’s dollars has been committed in this period by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist One Percenter American Establishment to the strategic interests of nuclear terrorist, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel. The World Health Organization (WHO) informs us that in 2011 the total US health expenditure was 17.9% of the GDP [15] and the US GDP in 2011 was $14.4 trillion [16] i.e. the 2011 annual total health expenditure of the US was 0.179 x $14.4 trillion = $2.6 trillion. Thus the upper estimate of a $10 trillion cost of Apartheid Israel to America is equivalent to about 4 years of the post- September 2001 total health expenditure of America. Alternatively, this $10 trillion fiscal perversion could have otherwise been used to increase the total American  health expenditure  since September  2001 from about $30 trillion to $40 trillion.

The estimate of 1.3 million preventable American deaths  per year means 12 x 1.3 million = 15.6 million preventable deaths since September  2001. Applying a VSL of $8 million person yields a notional cost of 15.6 million x $8 million = $125 trillion. If we accept the estimate that 25% of these preventable deaths can be attributed to 25% less US health funding (i.e.  the total American  health expenditure  being $30 trillion since September  2001 rather than  $40 trillion due to the pro-Zionist, pro-Apartheid Israel fiscal perversion) then we can add a further $125/4 or  about $30 trillion to the cost of  Apartheid Israel to America .

Conclusions

Zionist-subverted American Government support for Apartheid Israel in circa 2008 dollars totals about $40 trillion, the breakdown being  (1) $3 trillion (1948-2003), (2) $4-6 trillion (Zionist-promoted Iraq and Afghan Wars), (3) $0.7 trillion (the VSL-based cost of  88,000 US veteran suicides since September 2001) and (4) about $30 trillion (one quarter of the VSL-based cost of 15.6 million preventable American deaths since September 2001).

Like the other Western democracies,  the United States is a Murdochcracy, Lobbyocracy and Corporatocracy in which Big Money buys people, politicians, policies, parties, public perception of reality, votes and political power. Lying Mainstream media simply won’t report the 2 million Palestinian deaths since 1936 in the  Palestinian Genocide from violence (0.1 million) and violently-imposed derivation (1.9 million) [17], the 12 million Muslims who have been killed through violence (3.5 million ) or war-imposed deprivation (8.9 million) in the post-1990, Zionist-promoted US War on Muslims  [18] , or the 10 million  Muslims who have died  from violence (3 million)  or from war-imposed deprivation (7 million) since the US Government (with likely Zionist and Israeli involvement) almost certainly committed the 9-11 atrocity against the American people (see “Experts: US did 9-11”, [19])  – indeed the larger the crime, the more assiduous the Mainstream media censorship and Mainstream media lying [20-27].

The US has invaded 70 countries since 1776 [28] and is now evidently getting ready to war criminally invade and devastate Syria after several years of supplying one side of the civil war. However US hegemony over the world has come at a huge price. Thus each year about 18 million people die avoidably from deprivation on Spaceship Earth with the US in charge of the flight deck. Indeed it is estimated that 1.3 billion people have died from deprivation since 1950, this including  1.2 billion non-Europeans and 0.6 billion Muslims,  the latter Muslim Holocaust being 100 times greater in death toll  than in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) or the “forgotten” WW2 Bengal Holocaust in which the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons [29-31].

The horrendous human cost to America of support for Apartheid Israel by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist  One Percenters can be quantified in terms of a $40 trillion committed financial cost  in circa 2008 dollars since 1948 and some 4 million preventable American deaths in this century alone – a Zionist-imposed  American  Holocaust that goes unreported because of  Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist-perverted Mainstream media, politicians and academics. 99% of Congress are pro-Zionists and 20% are Jewish Zionists  (although the Jewish population  of America is only about 2% of the total). In contrast, about 80% of African American males in Chicago (a city with a Jewish Zionist  mayor, the son of an Irgun Zionist terrorist involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine)  [32]  and 27.4 % of African Americans live and die in poverty [33].

What can decent people do? Decent people are obliged to speak out against all  human rights abuse and the horrendous, genocidal  crimes of Apartheid Israel and its US Alliance supporters in particular (see “Jews Against Racist Zionism” [34], “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism” [35] and “Boycott Apartheid Israel” [36]).  Decent, patriotic Americans, and indeed all decent people who care for ordinary  Americans and their fellow human beings in general, should inform everyone they can about the Zionist-imposed American Holocaust  and Zionist perversion of an America in which 1.3 million Americans die preventably each year linked to the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist One Percenter fiscal perversion of committing trillions of dollars to killing Muslims abroad rather than saving American lives at home. Americans must wake up to the deadly perversion of their society by the traitorous and genocidally racist  Zionists and their neocon supporters. The traitorous, genocidally racist Zionists and their neoconservative  supporters should be exposed and sidelined from public life as have been like racists such as the Nazis, neo-Nazis, Apartheiders and KKK. Please tell everyone you can.

 References.

[1]. Dr John Gault, “Dr. Thomas R. Stauffer, 1935-2005: some personal reflections”, Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 16 February 2006: http://cmes.hmdc.harvard.edu/ecmes/alumni/stauffer .

[2]. Thomas R. Stauffer, “The costs to the American taxpayers id the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: $3 trillion”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, June 2003, pages 20-23 : http://www.wrmea.org/wrmea-archives/251-washington-report-archives-2000-2005/june-2003/4641-the-costs-to-american-taxpayers-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-3-trillion.ht m l .

[3]. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, “The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict” (W.W. Norton, 2008).

[4]. Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, “The true cost of the Iraq war: $3 trillion and beyond”, Washington Post, 5 September 2010: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html .

[5]. Eli Clifton, “Bill for Afghan War could run into trillions”, Information Clearing House, 18 May 2010 : http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25479.h t m .

[6].  Linda Bilmes, “The Financial Legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan : How Wartime Spending Decisions Will Constrain Future National Security Budgets”,  Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government Faculty Research Working Paper Series RWP13-006, March 2013: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=8956&type=WPN .

[7]. Pamela Olsen, “The staggering cost of Israel to Americans”, Information Clearing House, 2 April 2013: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34485.htm .

[8]. Rob Hotakainen, “Concern grows over “epidemic” veteran suicide rate”, The Tribune, 26 May 2011: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/05/26/1680716/concern-grows-over-epidemic-veteran.html .

[9]. Dr Janet Kemp and Dr Robert Bossarte, “Suicide data report, 2012”, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mental Health Services, Suicide Prevention Program, especially Figure 3: http://www.va.gov/opa/docs/Suicide-Data-Report-2012-final.pdf .

[10]. “USS Liberty incident”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident .

[11]. “Value of Life”, Wikipedia” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life .

[12]. Gabriel Nelson, “EPA plans to visit a touchy topic – the value of saved lives”, New York Times, 18 January 2011: http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/01/18/18greenwire-epa-plans-to-revisit-a-touchy-topic-the-value-75301.html?pagewanted=all .

[13]. Gideon Polya, “ One Million Americans Die Preventably Annually In USA ”, Countercurrents, 18 February 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya180212.htm .

[14]. Barbara Starfield, “Medical errors – a leading cause of death”, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), vol. 284, no. 4, 26 July 2000: http://www.cancure.org/medical_errors.htm .

[15]. “World Health Organization”, USA data: http://www.who.int/countries/usa/en/ .

[16]. US GDP: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp .

[17]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[18]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[19]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[20]. “Boycott Murdoch media”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottmurdochmedia/  .

[21]. “Censorship by The Conversation”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by .

[22]. “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home  .

[23]. “Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/  .

[24]. “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age .

[25]. “Censorship by ABC Late Night Live”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/  .

[26].   “Censorship by ABC Saturday Extra”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbyabclatenightlive/censorship-by-abc-sat .

[27].  “Censorship by the BBC”: https://sites.google.com/site/censorshipbythebbc/ .

[28]. Gideon Polya, “US has invaded 70 nations. Make 4 July Independence from America Day”, MWC News, 5 July 2013: http://mwcnews.net/focus/politics/28254-us-has-invaded-70-nations.html .

[29]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/  .

[30]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”, now available for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/  .

[31]. Gideon Polya, “ Bengal Famine. How Australia & UK killed 6-7 million Indians in WW2”, MWC News, 27 September 2011: http://mwcnews.net/focus/editorial/13742-bengal-famine.html .

[32]. Michelle Alexander, “The New Jim Crow.  Mass incarceration in an age of color blindness”.

[33]. Trymaine Lee, “Number of Americans living in poverty hits 52-year high, 27.4 percent of Blacks under the poverty line”, Huffington Post, Black Voices: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/13/number-of-americans-livin_n_960345.html .

[34]. “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[35]. “Non-Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/nonjewsagainstracistzionism/ .

[36]. “Boycott Apartheid Israel ”: https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/ .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .

What is the Coalition’s direct action climate change policy?

Updated 38 minutes ago

Photo: The Coalition is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. (AAP: Dean Lewins)

Map: Australia

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has released the Government’s Green Paper for its direct action climate change policy.

The paper released today is open for consultation until February, after which time a White Paper will be developed.

The Government wants to replace Labor’s carbon tax with its direct action plan, which would provide financial incentives for polluters to reduce emissions.

The Green Paper details how the Coalition’s Emissions Reduction Fund will operate.

The scheme is budgeted to cost $300 million, $500 million and $750 million over three years, starting on July 1, 2014.

Mr Hunt says new figures show Australia needs to to reduce its emissions by less than thought to achieve the targetted cut of 5 per cent by 2020.

“It’s going to be easier to achieve that figure now because of changes in Australian manufacturing,” he said.

“That’s not a desirable cause, but it’s a reality.

“We’ve seen a number of coal mines and a number of manufacturing businesses either not proceed or close down.”

Take a look at our explainer below on how the Coalition’s climate change policy works.

Direct action policy explained

The Coalition Government’s big policy plank has been to remove carbon pricing legislation and replace it with its own “direct action” package.

While both Labor and the Coalition agree on reducing emissions to 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020, they disagree on the mechanism.

Under Labor’s carbon pricing, the country’s biggest polluters pay for the amount of pollution they produce, giving them an incentive to reduce emissions.

Compensation is paid to taxpayers to help mitigate any price increases, such as the cost of electricity, that have been passed on.

But under the Coalition, businesses will compete to win tenders and be paid to undertake emission reduction projects.

The Government argues that this is the cheapest method to reduce emissions and is better for the economy than a nationwide “electricity tax”.

There are four key pillars that the Government has outlined as part of its environment policy:

• Clean air – Emissions Reduction Fund
• Clean land – Green Army, Landcare reform and simplified environmental assessments and approvals
• Clean water – Commitment to long-term planning for new dams and support for the Murray-Darling Basin Plan
• Heritage protection – New programs focusing on community and heritage landmarks

How does the Emissions Reduction Fund work?

The main feature of the direct action policy is the creation of an Emissions Reduction Fund, which will cost $3 billion over four years.

The fund will call for businesses to submit tenders for projects that will either lower emissions or offset them.

It will operate as a reverse auction, where businesses compete and undercut each other to win a contract and with it, the Government’s money.

The Government says the scheme will ensure a reduction of emissions for the best possible price.

The reverse auction method mirrors the existing National Water Market, which conducts water buybacks to increase river flows.

Emission reductions will be achieved through a range of projects, such as cleaning up power stations, capturing landfill gas, reforesting marginal lands or improving soil carbon.

A project needs to meet two criteria to win a contract from the fund:

• The emission reductions must be additional measures and not just business-as-usual
• The reduction estimates must be credible and verified

Measures that are already required to be carried out by businesses under government regulations cannot be used as projects for the fund.

Only the projects with the lowest cost per amount of abatement will be taken on by the reduction fund.

The fund is capped and Prime Minster Tony Abbott has previously indicated it will not be increased if the 2020 emission reduction target is not being reached.

Green Army

The Coalition aims to build an environmental workforce made up of 15,000 young people to undertake conservation projects.

The “Green Army” will carry out projects such as re-vegetating sand dunes, cleaning up riverbanks, weed control and regenerating local parks.

The workforce will work with and complement local groups such as Landcare, catchment authorities and councils.

Projects will be tailored to local environmental priorities.

Participants in the Green Army (initially only 17-24 year olds) will be paid a training allowance and the Government expects young people to gain valuable work skills from the group.

The training received will count towards the requirements for a Certificate 1 or 2 in land management, park management, landscaping or horticulture.

Full-time projects will run for up to 26 weeks in groups of 10 – nine participants and a supervisor.

Teams will be given money to pay for equipment and materials needed to undertake a project.

The program will begin in 2014-15 with 250 projects, which will be scaled up to 1,500 projects and a 15,000 strong workforce in 2018-19.

It is expected to cost $50 million in its first year and then $300 million over a four-year period.

What is the emission reduction target?

The Government is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt said in December 2013 that the carbon dioxide abatement needed to reach the target by 2020 is 431 million tonnes.

There is some debate over whether the target is ambitious enough to keep up with action by other countries.

In October 2013, the Labor-initiated independent climate policy advisor, the Climate Change Authority, said the target was inadequate.

The authority, which is to be scrapped under the Coalition Government, said in a report that a higher target would mean Australia would not need to drastically catch up later to fulfil its fair international role.

It recommended either a 15 or 25 per cent reduction by 2020.

But the Government says its target will not be modified until it sees the outcome of the 2015 Climate Summit in Paris.

What is the Renewable Energy Target?

The Coalition supports the Renewable Energy Target (RET) of 20 per cent by 2020, which is required by legislation to be reviewed every two years.

The target is also supported by Labor.

However, the Coalition has committed to axing the $10 billion green loans bank, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which invests in clean energy projects by co-financing with the private sector.

Solar panel rebates will be given to low-income households under the Coalition, with a cap on 100,000 rebates a year.