Topic: WE'RE STUFFED!!!

[erik]

Classic

March 3, 2007
Guest Columnist
An Afghan Policy Built on Pipe Dreams
By RORY STEWART

The international community’s policy in Afghanistan is based on the claim that Afghans are willing partners in the creation of a liberal democratic state. Senator John McCain finished a recent speech on Afghanistan by saying, “Billions of people around the world now embrace the ideals of political, economic and social liberty, conceived in the West, as their own.”

In Afghanistan in January, Tony Blair thanked Afghans by saying “we’re all in this together” and placing them in “the group of people who want to live in peace and harmony with each other, whatever your race or your background or your religion.”

Such language is inaccurate, misleading and dangerous.

Afghans, like Americans, do not want to be abducted and tortured. They want a say in who governs them, and they want to feed their families. But reducing their needs to broad concepts like “human rights,” “democracy” and “development” is unhelpful.

For many Afghans, sharia law is central. Others welcome freedom from torture, but not free media or freedom of religion; majority rule, but not minority rights; full employment, but not free-market reforms. “Warlords” retain considerable power. Millions believe that alcohol should be forbidden and apostates killed, that women should be allowed in public only in burqas. Many Pusthu clearly prefer the Taliban to foreign troops.

Yet, senior officials with long experience with Afghanistan often deny this reality. They insist that Taliban fighters have next to no local support and are purely Pakistani agents. The U.N. argues that “warlords” have little power and that the tribal areas can rapidly be brought under central control. The British defense secretary predicted last summer that British troops in Helmand Province could return “without a bullet fired.” Afghan cabinet ministers insist that narcotics growth and corruption can be ended and the economy can wean itself off foreign aid in five years. None of this is true. And most of them half-know it.

It is not only politicians who misrepresent the facts. Nonprofit groups endorse the fashionable jargon of state-building and civil society, partly to win grants. Military officers are reluctant to admit their mission is impossible. Journalists were initially surprisingly optimistic about transforming Afghanistan. No one wants to seem to endorse a status quo dominated by the Taliban and drugs. Humankind cannot bear very much reality, particularly in Afghanistan.

Does it matter? Most people see our misrepresentations as an unappealing but necessary part of international politics. The problem is that we act on the basis of our own lies. British soldiers were killed because they were not prepared for the Helmand insurgency. In the same province, the coalition recommended a Western-friendly technocrat as governor; he was so isolated and threatened he could barely leave his office. Hundreds of millions of dollars invested in anticorruption efforts, and the police and the counternarcotics ministry, has been wasted on Afghans with no interest in our missions. Other programs are perceived as a threat to local culture and have bred anger and resentment.

Still others have raised expectations we cannot fulfill, betraying our friends. I experienced this in Iraq, where I encouraged two friends to start gender and civil society programs; we were unable to protect them, and both were killed. Even when we fail, instead of recognizing the errors of the initial assessment and the mission, we blame problems in implementation and repeat false and illogical claims in order to acquire more money and troops.

The time has come to be honest about the limits of our power and the Afghan reality. This is not to counsel despair. There is no fighting in the streets of Kabul, the Hazara in the center of the country are more secure and prosperous than at almost any time in their history, and the economy grew last year by 18 percent. These are major achievements. With luck and the right kind of international support, Afghanistan can become more humane, prosperous and stable.

But progress will be slow. Real change can come only from within, and we have less power in Afghanistan than we claim. We must speak truthfully about this situation. Our lies betray Afghans and ultimately ourselves. And the cost in lives, opportunities and reputation is unbearable.

Rory Stewart’s latest book is the “The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq.” He runs the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Kabul and is a guest columnist this month.

How precise:

Humankind cannot bear very much reality, particularly in Afghanistan.

The problem is that we act on the basis of our own lies.

[erik]

Even conservative estimates are becoming increasingly pessimistic.

UN climate report will warn of risk species
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor
Last Updated: 1:25am BST 06/04/2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/06/nspecies06.xml

Nearly a third of the world's species of animals and plants will be at risk of extinction by climate change within 50 years, United Nations scientists and governments are expected to say in a report published today.
 
The report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to predict the loss of thousands of species in temperature-sensitive biodiversity hot spots such as the Great Barrier Reef, off the east coast of Australia, if temperatures go on rising.

For some species, such as corals, there will no longer be a climate that is suitable for them to survive. Others, like the North American rock rabbit, the pika, may be unable to reach distant regions that are more suitable.

In Europe the species expected to be challenged include the Spanish imperial eagle, the dunnock, crested tit and Scottish crossbill.

The final draft of the "policy-makers' summary" of the report on impacts of climate change, seen by The Daily Telegraph, gives higher certainty than before to the predictions of likely consequences of continued fossil fuel emissions at present levels.

Sources close to the groups negotiating the wording of the summary said last night that there was a "great rift" between Saudi Arabia and the United States and other countries over the emphasis given to predictions, including those of species extinction.

Saudi Arabia was said to be trying to insert text emphasising the benefits of warming for crop production in the far north of Europe and Siberia.

The US was said to be trying to have a map of the world showing significant observed changes in global temperatures since 1970 taken out of the report altogether. Sources close to the discussions said talks were expected to go on all night.

Unlike IPCC Working Group I's report in January on the science of climate change, which predicted a three-degree global average temperature rise by 2100, Working Group II's report contain the specifics of how the world will be affected by warming temperatures over a century.

The report says the world's poor will be in the front line against climate change, facing death and injury due to heat waves, floods, storms and droughts.

It predicts that the worst affected regions of the world will be the Arctic, sub-Saharan Africa, small low-lying islands, and the deltas of the major Asian rivers.

Michael Meacher, the former environment minister and stalking horse challenger to Gordon Brown, said that neither the Government nor the Tory leader David Cameron had "fully grasped the scale of the challenge, let alone proposed any serious way of meeting it".

He added: "Man-made climate change is the single greatest threat facing the world. But so far our policies have been marked by timidity and inadequacy."

[erik]

And governments...they just spin and fiddle...

UN agreement on severity of climate change
By Richard Holt and agencies
Last Updated: 3:06pm BST 06/04/2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=1231A3R2XF2UJQFIQMGSFFOAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/06/nclimate106.xml

Climate change will cause severe droughts and food shortages for billions of people unless governments act now, UN experts have agreed.

An agreement was reached after an all-night session in Brussels during which key sections were deleted from a draft report.

Scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings.

"It has been a complex exercise," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises.

Five days of negotiations came to an end when the delegates removed parts of a key chart highlighting devastating effects of climate change that come about with every rise of one degree Celsius.

There were also disagreements over the level of scientific reliability attached to key statements.

But in the end there was little doubt about the science, which was based on 29,000 sets of data, much of it collected in the past five years.

The United States, China and Saudi Arabia raised many of the objections to the phrasing, often seeking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.

The final IPCC report is the clearest and most comprehensive scientific statement to date on the impact of global warming, mainly caused by man-induced carbon dioxide pollution.

It said up to 30 per cent of the Earth's species face an increased risk of vanishing if global temperatures rise 2 degrees Celsius above the average in the 1980s and '90s.

Areas that now suffer a shortage of rain will become even drier, adding to the risks of hunger and disease, it said.

The world will face heightened threats of flooding, severe storms and the erosion of coastlines.

Negotiators pored over a 21-page draft summary which was intended as a policy guide for governments.

The summary pares down the full 1,500-page scientific assessment of the evidence of climate change so far and the impact it will have on the Earth's most vulnerable people and ecosystems.

Though weakened by the deletion of some elements, the final report "will send a very, very clear signal" to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the UN's leading climate change official.

The summary will be presented to the G8 summit of the world's richest nations in June, when the European Union is expected to renew appeals to US President George W Bush to join in international efforts to control emissions of fossil fuels.

This year's series of reports by the IPCC are the first in six years from the prestigious body of some 2,500 scientists, formed in 1988.

[erik]

Tigers fading fast in last stronghold

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article2437266.ece

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Published: 10 April 2007

Hope is fading in the fight to save the tiger in India, the animal's last stronghold, according to Indian conservationists. Resurgent poaching and feeble official protection have combined to put the animal, India's national symbol, on the road to extinction, say the country's leading tiger experts in a BBC documentary to be screened tomorrow.

They allege that the current Indian government simply does not have the political will to take the strong action now necessary to prevent the world's biggest cat from vanishing, in the face of an onslaught of illegal hunting.

Official tiger protection measures, they say, are a mixture of mismanagement, inept science and ineffective enforcement ­ plus a continuing unwillingness to admit the truth about plunging populations of the species.

Tiger numbers, which officially stand at nearly 4,000, are rapidly falling and may actually have dropped below 1,200, says Valmik Thapar, the conservationist who is the Indian tiger's best known champion. "I think we are living with the last tigers of India," he tells the BBC2 documentary, Battle To Save The Tiger.

The disappearance of India's wild tigers ­ one of the world's most charismatic animal species ­ would mark one of the most sinister milestones yet in the history of the degradation of the earth's environment by people.

It would also be a humiliation for India, demonstrating that a great country was unable to conserve a key part of its wildlife heritage. Although concern for the animals goes back decades, it has only become apparent recently that the plight of the Indian (or Bengal) tiger is critical.

This is because in 1973 the Indian government launched Project Tiger, a powerful and ambitious conservation programme which was very successful for more than 20 years. Personally backed by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi, it succeeded in more than doubling the country's tiger population from 2,000 to more than 4,300.

However, in recent years it has become clear that the original impetus behind Project Tiger had been lost and the programme had fallen apart ­ a situation graphically illustrated by the revelation in 2005 that every tiger at the country's premier reserve, Sariska in Rajasthan, had been killed. Tigers in other reserves were also shown to have been hunted out, although the government was claiming they were still there.

Last year the Indian government finally scrapped Project Tiger, and replaced it with a new body, the National Tiger Conservation Authority.

But the conservationists in the programme, which is narrated by Sir David Attenborough, allege that this is even weaker than the body it has replaced.

Karan Singh, a senior politician and an early chairman of Project Tiger, compares the situation 30 years ago with today. "Why were we successful? Because Indira Gandhi's political will was behind it," he says. "Everyone knew round the country if something goes wrong, Indira Gandhi was there, and was going to take them to task. But I don't think that the government of India as such today has that sort of commitment or that sort of passion. The current decline continues, and if we are unable to reverse the process, then it is only a matter of time before the tiger disappears."

Valmik Thapar, the author of numerous books on Indian natural history, said the responsibility for the tiger's survival was "100 per cent" that of the Indian government. "If the government wants to save tigers it can, if it doesn't want to save tigers, it'll allow them to go extinct," he said.

He specifically complains that major posts in environmental agencies are being left unfilled. "We are aware that we're facing the worst tiger and wildlife crisis in the history of our country, so what do we do to make matters worse? We leave the key positions in our federal governance mechanism vacant," he said.

"The result is that never before in the history of this country has wildlife and forest governance been at such a low ebb. In such a situation, it is inevitable that our tigers, leopards, lions and other wildlife will vanish."

According to the documentary, produced and directed by Mike Birkhead for the BBC Natural History Unit, the current poaching of Bengal tigers is being driven by two markets ­ the market for tiger bones, used in traditional Chinese medicine, and for tiger skins, used in ceremonial dress in Tibet. Both skins and bones are being smuggled out of India, and the trade is lucrative in the extreme ­ a skin can fetch £10,000, while the bones fetch about £3,000 per kilogram.

The tiger,Panthera tigris, is the biggest of the "big cats". At the start of the 20th century, there were probably 100,000 tigers in the world, with about 40,000 in India, their main stronghold. There were then eight sub-species of tiger, but the Balinese became extinct in 1937, the last Caspian was shot in 1970 and the Javan succumbed to habitat loss and hunting in the 1980s.

All five remaining sub-species ­ the Bengal, the Amur (in Asian Russia), the Indochinese, the South China and the Sumatran ­ are classed by the World Conservation Union as critically endangered. The official total world population now is between 5,000 and 7,000, but those figures were compiled nearly a decade ago. The true world total is likely to be very much lower.

[erik]

Australia's epic drought: The situation is grim

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article2465960.ece

By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 20 April 2007

Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.

The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce. But the two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies. Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing weather patterns attributed to global warming and a government that is only just starting to wake up to the severity of the position.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, a hardened climate-change sceptic, delivered dire tidings to the nation's farmers yesterday. Unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.

A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought.

Lovers of the Australian landscape often cite the poet Dorothea Mackellar who in 1904 penned the classic lines: "I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains." But the land that was Mackellar's muse is now cracked and parched, and its mighty rivers have shrivelled to sluggish brown streams. With paddocks reduced to dust bowls, graziers have been forced to sell off sheep and cows at rock-bottom prices or buy in feed at great expense. Some have already given up, abandoning pastoral properties that have been in their families for generations. The rural suicide rate has soared.

Mr Howard acknowledged that the measures are drastic. He said the prolonged dry spell was "unprecedentedly dangerous" for farmers, and for the economy as a whole. Releasing a new report on the state of the Murray and Darling, Mr Howard said: "It is a grim situation, and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain."

But prayer may not suffice, and many people are asking why crippling water shortages in the world's driest inhabited continent are only now being addressed with any sense of urgency.

The causes of the current drought, which began in 2002 but has been felt most acutely over the past six months, are complex. But few scientists dispute the part played by climate change, which is making Australia hotter and drier.

Environmentalists point to the increasing frequency and severity of drought-causing El Niño weather patterns, blamed on global warming. They also note Australia's role in poisoning the Earth's atmosphere. Australians are among the world's biggest per-capita energy consumers, and among the top producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Despite that, the country is one of only two industrialised nations - the United States being the other - that have refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The governments argue that to do so would harm their economies.

Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the climate-change doomsayers. The Prime Minister refused to meet Al Gore when he visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He was lukewarm about the landmark report by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which warned that large swaths of Australia's farming land would become unproductive if global temperatures rose by an average of four degrees.

Faced with criticism from even conservative sections of the media, Mr Howard realised that he had misread the public mood - grave faux pas in an election year. Last month's report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted more frequent and intense bushfires, tropical cyclones, and catastrophic damage to the Great Barrier Reef. The report also said there would be up to 20 per cent more droughts by 2030. And it said the annual flow in the Murray-Darling basin was likely to fall by 10-25 per cent by 2050. The basin, the size of France and Spain combined, provides 85 per cent of the water used nationally for irrigation.

While the government is determined to protect Australia's coal industry, the drought is expected to shave 1 per cent off annual growth this year. The farming sector of a country that once "rode the sheep's back" to prosperity is in desperate straits. With dams and reservoirs drying up, many cities and towns have been forced to introduce severe water restrictions.

Mr Howard has softened his rhetoric of late, and says that he now broadly accepts the science behind climate change. He has tried to regain the political initiative, announcing measures including a plan to take over regulatory control of the Murray-Darling river system from state governments.

He has declared nuclear power the way forward, and is even considering the merits of joining an international scheme to "trade" carbon dioxide emissions - an idea he opposed in the past.

Mr Howard's conservative coalition will face an opposition Labour Party revitalised by a popular new leader, Kevin Rudd, and offering a climate change policy that appears to be more credible than his. Ben Fargher, the head of the National Farmers' Federation, said that if fruit and olive trees died, that could mean "five to six years of lost production". Food producers also warned of major food price rises.

Mr Howard acknowledged that an irrigation ban would have a "potentially devastating" impact. But "this is very much in the lap of the gods", he said.

How UN warned Australia and New Zealand

Excerpts from UN's IPCC report on the threat of global warming to Australia and New Zealand:

"As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in south and east Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and eastern regions."

* "Significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some ecologically rich sites, including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland's tropics. Other sites at risk include the Kakadu wetlands ... and the alpine areas of both countries."

* "Ongoing coastal development and population growth in areas such as Cairns and south-east Queensland (Australia) and Northland to Bay of Plenty (New Zealand) are projected to exacerbate risks from sea-level rise and increases in the severity and frequency of storms and coastal flooding by 2050."

* "Production from agriculture and forestry by 2030 is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increases in droughts and fires."

* "The region has substantial adaptive capacity due to well-developed economies and scientific and technical capabilities, but there are considerable constraints to implementation ... Natural systems have limited adaptive capacity."

[Michael]

yes, well...
we are entering a nightmare.

[Jennifer-]

yes, well...
we are entering a nightmare.

 

My rattle sings for all of you there.

[Jahn]

yes, well...
we are entering a nightmare.

True for you in Australia. I've read some schocking articles about the lack of water, naughty Sun due to lack of Ozone and then all these wild fires. And I agree with E, it seems to be accelerating. We had another storm today, not that heavy, but it is one too many ...

[erik]

An island made by global warming

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2480994.ece

By Michael McCarthy, Environmental Editor
Published: 24 April 2007

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland's enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.

Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland's remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea.

Shaped like a three-fingered hand some 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it has been discovered by a veteran American explorer and Greenland expert, Dennis Schmitt, who has named it Warming Island (Or Uunartoq Qeqertoq in Inuit, the Eskimo language, that he speaks fluently).

The US Geological Survey has confirmed its existence with satellite photos, that show it as an integral part of the Greenland coast in 1985, but linked by only a small ice bridge in 2002, and completely separate by the summer of 2005. It is now a striking island of high peaks and rugged rocky slopes plunging steeply to a sea dotted with icebergs.

As the satellite pictures and the main photo which we publish today make clear, Warming Island has been created by a quite undeniable, rapid and enormous physical transformation and is likely to be seen around the world as a potent symbol of the coming effects of climate change.

But it is only one more example of the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, that scientists have begun to realise, only very recently, is proceeding far more rapidly than anyone thought.

The second-largest ice sheet in the world (after Antarctica), if its entire 2.5 million cubic kilometres of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 metres, or more than 23 feet.

That would inundate most of the world's coastal cities, including London, swamp vast areas of heavily-populated low-lying land in countries such as Bangladesh, and remove several island countries such as the Maldives from the face of the Earth. However, even a rise one tenth as great would have devastating consequences.

Sea level rise is already accelerating. Sea levels are going up around the world by about 3.1mm per year - the average for the period 1993-2003. That is itself sharply up from an average of 1.8mm per year over the longer period 1961-2003. Greenland ice now accounts for about 0.5 millimetre of the total. (Much of the rest of the rise is coming from the expansion of the world's sea water as it warms.)

Until two or three years ago, it was thought that the break-up of the ice sheet might take 1,000 years or more but a series of studies and alarming observations since 2004 have shown the disintegration is accelerating and, as a consequence, sea level rise may be much quicker than anticipated.

Earlier computer models, researchers believe, failed to capture properly the way the ice sheet would respond to major warming (over the past 20 years, Greenland's air temperature has risen by 3C). The 2001 report of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was relatively reassuring, suggesting change would be slow.

But satellite measurements of Greenland's entire land mass show that the speed at which its glaciers are moving to the sea has increased significantly in the past decade, with some of them moving three times faster than in the mid-1990s.

Scientists estimate that, in 1996, glaciers deposited about 50 cubic km of ice into the sea. In 2005, it had risen to 150 cubic km of ice.

A study last year by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology showed that, rather than just melting relatively slowly, the ice sheet is showing all the signs of a mechanical break-up as glaciers slip ever faster into the ocean, aided by the "lubricant" of meltwater forming at their base. As the meltwater seeps down it lubricates the bases of the "outlet" glaciers of the ice sheet, causing them to slip down surrounding valleys towards the sea,

Another discovery has been the increase in "glacial earthquakes" caused by the sudden movement of enormous blocks of ice within the ice sheet. The annual number of them recorded in Greenland between 1993 and 2002 was between six and 15. In 2003, seismologists recorded 20 glacial earthquakes. In 2004, they monitored 24 and for the first 10 months of 2005 they recorded 32. The seismologists also found the glacial earthquakes occurred mainly during the summer months, indicating the movements were indeed associated with rapidly melting ice - normal "tectonic" earthquakes show no such seasonality. Of the 136 glacial quakes analysed in a report published last year, more than a third occurred during July and August.

The creation of Warming Island appears to be entirely consistent with the disintegrating ice sheet, coming about when the glacier bridge linking it to the mainland simply disappeared. It was discovered by Mr Schmitt, a 60-year-old explorer from Berkeley, California, who has known Greenland for 40 years, during a trip he led up the remote coastline.

According to the US Geological Survey: "More islands like this may be discovered if the Greenland Ice Sheet continues to disappear."

A self-governing dependency of Denmark, Greenland is the largest island in the world but is inhabited by only 56,000 people, mainly Inuit. More than 80 per cent of the land surface is covered by the ice sheet.

[nichi]

On the heels of Juhani sharing with me the other day that one of the 7 remaining female amur leopards -- in the world, in time-and-space, out of a population of 24-35 -- was shot and killed in Russia, I stumble upon this item about honeybees ...

One of my coworkers mentioned that there was a swarm of bees gathered in a hedge around the parking lot of the company across the street. I desperately tried to get in touch with my common sense, but the photographer in me won out as usual.

The bees allowed me to approach fairly close at first. After about three shots they started to show a little agitation at my proximity and attention. I grabbed one more photo, then made a calm (but hasty) retreat under the close, (too close,) observation of my "fighter escorts". I was never stung, only menaced, and one bee kept ramming itself into me.

I was explaining to my friends the plight of the disappearing honeybees around the country in the safety of the Lab where we work, and telling them how any beekeeper would be glad to come collect this swarm if they were notified. I was horrified to see an exterminator in protective clothing, obviously called by the company in whose parking lot the bees were resting, spraying the swarm with insecticide.
--Stan S. (somewhere in the US)
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/gen/page1985.html?theme=light

I wish the location had been noted, but the editors of the site would have verified that this contributor was real. He probably did not reveal the specifics because that company would have had newscameras descending upon them, like hounds to the kill.

Our tangential unthinkingness and ignorance will be the things that tip the whole balance over, apparently.

[erik]

Yes, the lack of understanding.

One famous German said after Germany's defeat in World War II and after all the atrocities committed by Germans had became public: 'We, Germans, have always preferred to believe more than to think and understand.'

Who would like to bear the responsibility of thinking independently, acting and making mistakes, being hurt and still walking, and taking new chances?

Western culture is safety-and-comfort-culture utterly contradicting the purpose of Life.

[erik]

EU green targets will damage rainforests

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/27/wgreen27.xml

By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels
Last Updated: 5:51am BST 27/04/2007

European union green fuel targets will accelerate the destruction of rainforests in South-East Asia and threaten the habitat of endangered species, such as the orang-utan.

In March EU leaders agreed to set a binding climate change target to make biofuel - energy sources made from plant material - account for 10 per cent of all Europe's transport fuels by 2020.

But the European Commission has admitted that the objective, which aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions, may have the unintended consequence of speeding up the destruction of tropical rainforests and peatlands in South-East Asia - actually increasing, not reducing, global warming.

European consumption of plant-based fuels will soar from around three million tons at present to more than 30 million tons in 2010, driving a boom in imports of cheap biofuels.

Europe is still years away from self-sufficiency in biofuels produced from straw and other waste vegetation. As a result, demand for cheap imports of fuels, such as palm oil, is expected to soar.

Countries such as Indonesia have already begun planning an increase in the production of palm oil, a development campaigners fear will see more rainforest fall to the axe and rare peat soil burned.

Andris Piebalgs, the European Energy Commissioner, has confirmed that, despite setting the biofuel target, the EU has no system to certify that imports exclude palm oil or fuel production that has resulted in the destruction of rare natural resources.

''No mandatory certification exists at present that will guarantee that tropical rainforests or peatlands in South-East Asia are not destroyed for the production of palm oil," he said.

In a written response to a European Parliament question, Mr Piebalgs went on to confess that without a scheme EU targets "would supplement the pressure caused by growth in palm oil use and would make an additional contribution to the pressure on tropical forests and peatlands".

Commission declarations that it plans to develop a "sustainability" scheme, similar to one applying to the logging of tropical woods, have been greeted with scepticism.

Chris Davies, a British Liberal Democrat Euro-MP, doubts that any EU measures can be properly policed.

''We haven't been able to halt the supply from rainforests of illegally felled timber so how can we have confidence that sustainability certificates would be worth the paper on which they are written?," he asked.

Environmentalists have called on the commission to ensure that biofuel policy does not wreak eco-destruction before setting targets.

''The biofuel policy of the European Commission is a complete mess," said a Friends of the Earth UK spokesman.

He added: "We think these targets are not only not useful but are destructive.

''Abandoning them is the only responsible thing to do." Efforts to agree international eco-standards for biofuel will be on the agenda of an EU-US summit in Washington next Monday.

Many developing countries are opposed, on free trade grounds, to green import restrictions on commodities such as palm oil and America disputes that a problem even exists, making agreement unlikely.

[erik]

Australians turn to local knowledge for rain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/04/waus04.xml

By Nick Squires in Sydney
Last Updated: 3:15am BST 04/05/2007

As drought-stricken farmers pray for rain, Australia's weather forecasters are turning increasingly to ancient Aboriginal knowledge in their attempts to understand the country's weather.

Where meteorologists base their forecasts on satellites and synoptic charts, Aborigines observe the flight of black cockatoos and the flowering of wattle bushes.

"The cockys [cockatoos] are flocking everywhere. That's usually a good sign that rain is coming," said Jeremy Clark, an Aboriginal park ranger from the south of the country.

"The way the flora and plants and shrubs are starting to react, I'd certainly be expecting rain."

More than two centuries after Australia was colonised by Britain, there is a belated recognition that 40,000 years of Aboriginal experience in weather-watching can offer valuable lessons.

Residents of the southern, most populated parts of the country can now consult the Indigenous Weather Knowledge on the official website of the Australia's Bureau of Meteorology at www.bom.gov.au

Aboriginal weather philosophy is based on the principle that subtle changes to plants and animals provide clues about changes in the weather.

"People have been using these relationships since long before western society was under way," Dr Harvey Stern, a climatologist, said.

"We're interested to see the way they are describing the plants, the animals and the seasons all as one body of knowledge."

In the Northern Territory, when fruit bats move from bushland to river banks, Aborigines know that the rainy season is on its way. Aboriginal weathermen claim that their predictions are 90 per cent accurate and as reliable as the evening television forecasts.

Australians need all the help they can get - last month John Howard, the prime minister, said the country faced an "unprecedentedly dangerous" drought.

[erik]

Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2539349.ece

In the next 24 hours, deforestation will release as much CO2 into the atmosphere as 8 million people flying from London to New York. Stopping the loggers is the fastest and cheapest solution to climate change. So why are global leaders turning a blind eye to this crisis?

By Daniel Howden
Published: 14 May 2007

The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth's equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories.

The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists.

Figures from the GCP, summarising the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total.

"Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change," said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP.

Scientists say one days' deforestation is equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York. Reducing those catastrophic emissions can be achieved most quickly and most cheaply by halting the destruction in Brazil, Indonesia, the Congo and elsewhere.

No new technology is needed, says the GCP, just the political will and a system of enforcement and incentives that makes the trees worth more to governments and individuals standing than felled. "The focus on technological fixes for the emissions of rich nations while giving no incentive to poorer nations to stop burning the standing forest means we are putting the cart before the horse," said Mr Mitchell.

Most people think of forests only in terms of the CO2 they absorb. The rainforests of the Amazon, the Congo basin and Indonesia are thought of as the lungs of the planet. But the destruction of those forests will in the next four years alone, in the words of Sir Nicholas Stern, pump more CO2 into the atmosphere than every flight in the history of aviation to at least 2025.

Indonesia became the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world last week. Following close behind is Brazil. Neither nation has heavy industry on a comparable scale with the EU, India or Russia and yet they comfortably outstrip all other countries, except the United States and China.

What both countries do have in common is tropical forest that is being cut and burned with staggering swiftness. Smoke stacks visible from space climb into the sky above both countries, while satellite images capture similar destruction from the Congo basin, across the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo.

According to the latest audited figures from 2003, two billion tons of CO2 enters the atmosphere every year from deforestation. That destruction amounts to 50 million acres - or an area the size of England, Wales and Scotland felled annually.

The remaining standing forest is calculated to contain 1,000 billion tons of carbon, or double what is already in the atmosphere.

As the GCP's report concludes: "If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change."

Standing forest was not included in the original Kyoto protocols and stands outside the carbon markets that the report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) pointed to this month as the best hope for halting catastrophic warming.

The landmark Stern Report last year, and the influential McKinsey Report in January agreed that forests offer the "single largest opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions of carbon emissions".

International demand has driven intensive agriculture, logging and ranching that has proved an inexorable force for deforestation; conservation has been no match for commerce. The leading rainforest scientists are now calling for the immediate inclusion of standing forests in internationally regulated carbon markets that could provide cash incentives to halt this disastrous process.

Forestry experts and policy makers have been meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week to try to put deforestation on top of the agenda for the UN climate summit in Bali, Indonesia, this year. Papua New Guinea, among the world's poorest nations, last year declared it would have no choice but to continue deforestation unless it was given financial incentives to do otherwise.

Richer nations already recognise the value of uncultivated land. The EU offers €200 (£135) per hectare subsidies for "environmental services" to its farmers to leave their land unused.

And yet there is no agreement on placing a value on the vastly more valuable land in developing countries. More than 50 per cent of the life on Earth is in tropical forests, which cover less than 7 per cent of the planet's surface.

They generate the bulk of rainfall worldwide and act as a thermostat for the Earth. Forests are also home to 1.6 billion of the world's poorest people who rely on them for subsistence. However, forest experts say governments continue to pursue science fiction solutions to the coming climate catastrophe, preferring bio-fuel subsidies, carbon capture schemes and next-generation power stations.

Putting a price on the carbon these vital forests contain is the only way to slow their destruction. Hylton Philipson, a trustee of Rainforest Concern, explained: "In a world where we are witnessing a mounting clash between food security, energy security and environmental security - while there's money to be made from food and energy and no income to be derived from the standing forest, it's obvious that the forest will take the hit."

[TIOTIT]

If anyone sees Dorothy get her to send me some red slippers!!!
Life in OZmerica just keeps getting better....



Thursday, May 17, 2007

Army Will Be Deployed To Streets Of Sydney For APEC Conference

City Centre To Become Mini-Police State For Up To Two Weeks

Random Body Searches And Detentions Without Charge

For up to two weeks in September, a huge area of Sydney's central business district, and tourist shopping mecca, will be blockaded by hundreds of police, security guards and Australia's military. Soldiers, armed with assault rifles, will allegedly be given "shoot to kill" rules of engagement to deal with security threats.

Black Hawk helicopters will patrol the skies, snipers will be positioned on the rooftops of some of Sydney's landmark buildings, train stations will be closed down and checkpoints will screen each and every person who tries to enter 'The Zone'.

In a quick series of announcements earlier this week, the state and federal government unveiled the first slab of details revealing just how severe the ultra-security will be when more than 20 world leaders, including Presidents Bush and Putin, descend on Sydney for the APEC summit in September this year.

The publicly released plans read like scenarios culled of the Orwellian police state portrayed in the movie 'V For Vendetta', and Sydneysiders are already expressing their anger and frustration at an event that they know will paralyse the city centre, while they still have to go to work and try to live their lives.

While news that Australian soldiers carrying assault rifles will be patrolling the streets of Sydney was jaw-dropping enough, we've also now learned that special legislation will be introduced, allowed under anti-terror laws, to allow police to pull people they deem to be a possible security threat off the street and detainee them without charge, for days at a time. Other Sydneysiders can look forward to the possibility of being subjected to random full body searches :

    ...a giant security triangle will envelop an area marked by the Sydney Opera House, Government House and the Sydney Convention Centre.

    The corridor to Sydney Airport is also expected to be a declared search zone.

    People who venture into the areas will be subject to random body searches during the seven-day conference, with security peaking from September 7-9 when 21 world leaders arrive to Sydney.

    Additional legislation will also be introduced to allow security agencies from foreign governments to enforce their own security arrangements while in Australia, News Limited reports.

Bizarrely, the New South Wales premier, Morris Iemma, spun out a fantastic fantasy about how good the APEC summit will be for promoting Sydney internationally as a tourist destination.

Yeah, if your idea of a tourist destination is a place where the streets are locked down by armed checkpoints, where military patrols roam freely and the sky is criss-crossed by thundering Black Hawk helicopters :

    Prime Minister John Howard and New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma met today to discuss transport and security for the meeting of 21 world leaders, including US President George W Bush.

    The (security) measures mean three city circle train stations – St James, Museum and Circular Quay – will be closed for three days from the Friday, which will be a public holiday in Sydney.

    Many other measures have yet to be made public, but other areas of the city centre will also become restricted zones and heavy security will be in place at a number of hotels.

    The Sydney Opera House, Government House and the Sydney Exhibition and Convention Centre will be the key APEC venues.

    Mr Howard and Mr Iemma said they hoped the Sydney Harbour Bridge would remain open and that disruptions on the Cahill Expressway, leading to the bridge, would be minimal.

    "Some disruption is unavoidable; the only way you avoid disruption is to say that Sydney is closed for business as far as major international gatherings are concerned," Mr Howard said.

    "We intend it to be a great weekend for Sydney and Australia and it will be ... both being Sydney boys, we intend to make sure it works."

    Mr Iemma said Sydney would gain economically from hosting the summit and from worldwide exposure.

    He said during the three days of the event Sydneysiders should attempt to live their lives as normal, but be wary of the closures and lockdowns.

    "It's a balance between ensuring a successful conference, a successful gathering and ensuring the safety and security of those who will be participating," Mr Iemma said.

    "And at the same time to minimise inconvenience and disruption."


This level of security is moving beyond the absurd, and is an affront to rights of Sydneysiders to move freely about their city.

Here's an idea : choose one of the dozens of isolated island resorts off Australia's east coast, rent the whole thing for a week, deploy the Navy, establish a security zone around the island and hold the APEC conference there.

It's remarkable to think that John Howard thinks APEC will stand as the jewel in the crown of his 11 year long stretch as the leader of Australia.

With free citizens being randomly selected for full body searches, or snatched off the streets of the city and bundled into vans and then held without charge, not to forget the weeks of 'rehearsals' where Black Hawk helicopters will buzz Sydney and its suburbs with thundering flights just above the tree tops, and 'persons of interests' being hauled in for questioning, Sydneysiders are going to get a full-scale taste of what it's like to live in a mini-police state.

The only Sydneysiders looking forward to the APEC summit, and all the delays, hassles and rights violations that will result, are the prime minister and the premier.

Of course, neither of them have to worry about being stuck in gridlock for hours at a time, while fleets of police-escorted presidential motorcades plough through the city centre, as they can always hide away in the back of a speeding ambulance to get to where they want to go. It wouldn't be the first time either of them have beat the gridlock using this method. Solely for "security reasons" of course It's not the type of stuff that concerns Somarians (to much)