Global Warming « Tikkunista!

2. Right Wing Enviro–Denial

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Few aspects of reality threaten unbridled capitalism more than the increasing evidence that it’s destroying the planet. So clearly, that news must be blocked. In the US, right-wingers fund outrageous campaigns of lies; in Canada, where they control the government they simply muzzle scientists, or defund research that might report the wrong results. Elizabeth May, the head of Canada’s Green Party, lists 18 items attacking environmental protection, all buried in Bill C-38.

* US Think Tank Compares Belief In Global Warming To Mass Murder Guardian

It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let’s start with: “What on earth were they thinking?”

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.

I’ll let its own press release for its upcoming conference explain, as there’s simply no need to finesse it further:

“Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in 2010).
These rogues and villains were chosen because they made public statements about how man-made global warming is a crisis and how mankind must take immediate and drastic actions to stop it.
Why did Heartland choose to feature these people on its billboards? Because what these murderers and madmen have said differs very little from what spokespersons for the United Nations, journalists for the “mainstream” media, and liberal politicians say about global warming.”

But then comes the best bit:

“Of course, not all global warming alarmists are murderers or tyrants.”

* Conservative Thinktanks Step Up Attacks Against Obama’s Clean Energy Strategy The Guardian

A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda. A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.

Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters. The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project. The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February.

* Tories Admit To Closing Enviro Research Group Because They Disliked Results The Hook

The federal government has confirmed what the rumour mill suspected: it shut down an arm’s length, independent advisory group because it didn’t like the advice it was getting on addressing climate change. Funding for the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE) was cut in the last budget, giving the group just one year to live. Since 1988, it has been producing research on how business and government policies can work together for sustainable development — including the idea of introducing carbon taxes.

Environment Minister Peter Kent had initially said the reason for the closure was because such research can now be easily accessed through the Internet, and through universities and other think tanks. But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said Monday the shuttering of the round table had more to do with the content of the research itself.

“Why should taxpayers have to pay for more than 10 reports promoting a carbon tax, something that the people of Canada have repeatedly rejected?” Baird said in response to a question by Liberal Leader Bob Rae during question period. “It should agree with Canadians. It should agree with the government.”

* Bill C-38: the Environmental Destruction Act Elizabeth May The Tyee

Here’s what is in C-38 on the environment. (C-38 threatens more than environmental damage, but this should give you a sense of why I am determined to stop this bill.)

Canadian Environmental Assessment Act ditched.

Canadian Environmental Protection Act undercut.

Fisheries Act seriously weakened.

Energy Board Act neutered.

Species at Risk Act hamstrung.

Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act made more industry friendly.

Canada Seeds Act inspections privatized.

Editor’s note: 11 more items in full list, with explanations

6. Followups

May-18-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: When we’re away for two weeks, there are more items to followup. In Canada, most of the press on the F35 has focussed on the financial debacle, and the lies the Conservatives have used to cover up. But it’s becoming clearer that the plane itself is a disaster, at any price. Then, a long New Yorker article looks in detail at geo-engineering, (correcting global warming by changing the planet) and why we’re probably going to try it, and the political disasters that will ensue. We missed Mother’s Day, but it’s worth noting that it started as a political act, not as a Hallmark promo. And there’s a fine summary of all the things that aren’t torture according to the US. May they never happen to any of us.

* F35: The Jet That Ate The Pentagon The Toronto Star

Already unaffordable, the F-35’s price is headed in one direction — due north. The F-35 isn’t only expensive — it’s way behind schedule. The first plan was to have an initial batch of F-35s available for combat in 2010. Then first deployment was to be 2012. More recently, the military services have said the deployment date is “to be determined.” A new target date of 2019 has been informally suggested in testimony — almost 10 years late.

If the F-35’s performance were spectacular, it might be worth the cost and wait. But it is not. Even if the aircraft lived up to its original specifications — and it will not — it would be a huge disappointment. The reason it is such a mediocrity also explains why it is unaffordable and, for years to come, unobtainable.

….This grotesquely unpromising plan has already resulted in multitudes of problems — and 80 per cent of the flight testing remains. A virtual flying piano, the F-35 lacks the F-16’s agility in the air-to-air mode and the F-15E’s range and payload in the bombing mode, and it can’t even begin to compare to the A-10 at low-altitude close air support for troops engaged in combat. Worse yet, it won’t be able to get into the air as often to perform any mission — or, just as important, to train pilots — because its complexity prolongs maintenance and limits availability. The aircraft most like the F-35, the F-22, was able to get into the air on average for only 15 hours per month in 2010 when it was fully operational….

The bottom line: The F-35 is not the wonder its advocates claim. It is a gigantic performance disappointment, and in some respects a step backward. The problems, integral to the design, cannot be fixed without starting from a clean sheet of paper.

* Geo-Engineering The New Yorker

For years, even to entertain the possibility of human intervention on such a scale—geoengineering, as the practice is known—has been denounced as hubris. Predicting long-term climatic behavior by using computer models has proved difficult, and the notion of fiddling with the planet’s climate based on the results generated by those models worries even scientists who are fully engaged in the research. “There will be no easy victories, but at some point we are going to have to take the facts seriously,’’ David Keith, a professor of engineering and public policy at Harvard and one of geoengineering’s most thoughtful supporters, told me. “Nonetheless,’’ he added, “it is hyperbolic to say this, but no less true: when you start to reflect light away from the planet, you can easily imagine a chain of events that would extinguish life on earth.” There is only one reason to consider deploying a scheme with even a tiny chance of causing such a catastrophe: if the risks of not deploying it were clearly higher. No one is yet prepared to make such a calculation, but researchers are moving in that direction.

….Unfortunately, the least risky approach politically is also the most dangerous: do nothing until the world is faced with a cataclysm and then slip into a frenzied crisis mode. The political implications of any such action would be impossible to overstate. What would happen, for example, if one country decided to embark on such a program without the agreement of other countries? Or if industrialized nations agreed to inject sulfur particles into the stratosphere and accidentally set off a climate emergency that caused drought in China, India, or Africa?

“Let’s say the Chinese government decides their monsoon strength, upon which hundreds of millions of people rely for sustenance, is weakening,” Caldeira said. “They have reason to believe that making clouds right near the ocean might help, and they started to do that, and the Indians found out and believed—justifiably or not—that it would make their monsoon worse. What happens then? Where do we go to discuss that? We have no mechanism to settle that dispute.”

* The Radical History of Mother’s Day Nation of Change

Mother’s Day began in America in 1870 when Julia Ward Howe wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation. Written in response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, her proclamation called on women to use their position as mothers to influence society in fighting for an end to all wars. She called for women to stand up against the unjust violence of war through their roles as wife and mother, to protest the futility of their sons killing other mothers’ sons.

Howe wrote:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

* Would the Last Civil Right in America Please Remember to Close the Door on Its Way Out? Lowering the Bar

Q: What do all of the following have in common?

Prolonged isolation;
Deprivation of light;
Exposure to prolonged periods of light and/or darkness;
Extreme variations in temperature;
Sleep adjustment;
Threats of severe physical abuse;
Death threats;
Administration of psychotropic drugs;
Shackling and manacling for hours at a time;
Use of “stress” positions;
Noxious fumes that caused pain to eyes and nose;
Withholding of any mattress, pillow, sheet or blanket;
Constant surveillance;
Incommunicado detention, including denial of all contact with family and legal counsel for a 21-month period;
Denial of medical care for serious and potentially life-threatening ailments, including chest pain and difficulty breathing, as well as for treatment of the chronic, extreme pain caused by being forced to endure stress positions, resulting in severe and continuing mental and physical harm, pain, and profound disruption of the senses and personality.

Any guesses? Time’s up!

A: They’re all things that government officials could do to an American citizen and still claim later that they didn’t know they were “torturing” that citizen, according to a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

5. Reasons for Hope

May-04-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: So why hope? You’ve just read four sections about how the US has turned mad abroad, and tyrannical at home, how the Israeli government is at best incompetent or mad (At worst? Both.), how the shadow of the Holocaust looms over us, and now I suggest hope? Absolutely. Orion Magazine has a longish piece suggesting the direction out of the US pit, and Uri Avnery, founder of Gush Shalom, writes about why he remains an optimist and why you should be too. And Forbes shows a realistic possible solution to the energy/ global warming crisis. Yes those were btter pills above, but now it’s sweet dessert. You’ve earned it. Have a second helping of hope… no calories, either.

* America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I James Gustave Speth Orion Magazine (Thanks, Gabe!)

What is now desperately needed is transformative change in the system itself. To deal successfully with all the challenges America now faces, we must therefore complement reform with at least equal efforts aimed at transformative change to create a new operating system that routinely delivers good results for people and planet.

At the core of this new operating system must be a sustaining economy based on new economic thinking and driven forward by a new politics. The purpose and goal of a sustaining economy is to provide broadly shared prosperity that meets human needs while preserving the earth’s ecological integrity and resilience—in short, a flourishing people and a flourishing nature. That is the paradigm shift we must now seek.

I believe this paradigm shift in the nature and operation of America’s political economy can be best approached through a series of interacting, mutually reinforcing transformations—transformations that attack and undermine the key motivational structures of the current system, transformations that replace these old structures with new arrangements needed for a sustaining economy and a successful democracy.

* Confessions of an Optimist Uri Avnery Counterpunch

Some time ago I bumped into the writer Amos Oz at a wedding and we talked about this curiosity, my optimism. He said that he was a pessimist. Being a pessimist, he said, was a win-win situation. If things turn to the better, you are happy. If things get worse, you are still happy, because you have been right all along.

The trouble with pessimism, I told him, was that it leads nowhere. Pessimism relieves you of any urge to do something. If things are going to get worse anyhow, why bother? Pessimism is a comfortable attitude. It even allows you to be contemptuous of the optimists, who still struggle for a better world. Optimism is for simpletons.

But this is exactly what it’s all about. Only optimists can struggle. If you don’t believe in a better world, a better country, a better society, you can’t fight for them. You can only sit in your armchair in front of the TV, tut-tutting at the stupidity of the human race, and particularly your own people, and feel superior.

* Eating Less Meat Is World’s Best Chance For Timely Climate Change Forbes

Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be a vegetarian diet, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine.

“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote….A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.

Consequently, state the pair, replacing livestock products with meat alternatives would “have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”

5. Gaia Bites Back

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: She’s been teaching us for millennia: as ye sow, so ye shall reap. Fracking produces earthquakes; giant dams redistribute weight, and then things shift; warmer weather produces changing weather patterns. There’s a lesson here, though I don’t suppose we’ll be quick to learn it without some more of Her exemplary grandmotherly kindness.

* Earthquakes Linked To Oil And Gas Extraction, Studies Show Toronto Star

If you prod Mother Earth, she’s likely to shake you up, a new U.S. study has found. It builds on earlier studies – some performed in Canada – that draw links between small earthquakes and a gas production technique known as “fracking,” or breaking up underground shale to release natural gas.

A study by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey says that a “remarkable” increase in the number of small quakes in the middle of the U.S. is “almost certainly manmade.” The frequency of quakes recorded in 2011 was six times anything recorded before 2000, the study found. “A naturally occurring rate of change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region,” the abstract says.

* Three Gorges Forces Further Displacement China Digital Times

Twenty years ago this month, the Chinese government, amid great controversy but with the blessing of a Canadian government report, authorized construction of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.The critics said the dam would be an environmental and economic nightmare that would flood millions of people off their land, induce landslides and earthquakes, cripple navigation and produce unaffordable electricity.

Twenty years later, the critics have been proven right on all counts. The arguments in favour of the dam were always thin gruel, without scientific depth or credibility, repeated ad nauseam in the form of propaganda, while the arguments against the dam were extensive and detailed and, as we now know, accurate.

About one year ago, Beijing officially acknowledged the negative social and environmental impact of the project. So far, over a million people have been forced to relocate as the waters of the Yangtze consumed their homes and farmland, and more may soon be forced to move due to related geological changes. The Washington Post reports: Another 100,000 people may have to move away from China’s Three Gorges Dam due to the risk of disastrous landslides and bank collapses around the reservoir of the world’s biggest hydroelectric facility, state media said Wednesday.

* Global Warming is Affecting Weather

Global warming is making hot days hotter, rainfall and flooding heavier, hurricanes stronger and droughts more severe.

This intensification of weather and climate extremes will be the most visible impact of global warming in our everyday lives. People who have the least ability to cope with these changes–the poor, very old, very young, or sick–are the most vulnerable.

3. Global Warming

Mar-30-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The core question about global warming is how bad things have to get before action is taken. And like an oil tanker, the world’s economies can’t change directions quickly. There are certainly still scientific uncertainties (how fast, and how bad) but that we have changed the climate has become terribly clear.

* Global Warming Close to Becoming Irreversible Scientific American

The world is close to reaching tipping points that will make it irreversibly hotter, making this decade critical in efforts to contain global warming, scientists warned on Monday. Scientific estimates differ but the world’s temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably.

As emissions grow, scientists say the world is close to reaching thresholds beyond which the effects on the global climate will be irreversible, such as the melting of polar ice sheets and loss of rainforests. “This is the critical decade. If we don’t get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines,” said Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University’s climate change institute, speaking at a conference in London.

Despite this sense of urgency, a new global climate treaty forcing the world’s biggest polluters, such as the United States and China, to curb emissions will only be agreed on by 2015 – to enter into force in 2020.

* 90 Degrees in Winter: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like NationofChange

Beginning in mid-March, however, [the National Weather Service’s] various offices began issuing bulletins that sounded slightly shaken. “There’s extremes in weather, but seeing something like this is impressive and unprecedented,” Chicago NWS meteorologist Richard Castro told the Daily Herald. “It’s extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day,” the office added in an official statement.

It wasn’t just Chicago, of course. A huge swath of the nation simmered under bizarre heat. International Falls, Minnesota, the “icebox of the nation,” broke its old temperature records—by twenty-two degrees, which according to weather historians may be the largest margin ever for any station with a century’s worth of records. Winner, South Dakota, reached 94 degrees on the second-to-last day of winter. …It’s hard to overstate how impossible this weather is—when you have nearly a century and a half of records, they should be hard to break, much less smash. But this is like Barry Bonds on steroids if his steroids were on steroids, an early season outbreak of heat completely without precedent in its scale and spread.

* February, 2012 was 324th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average

The last month with below average temperatures was February 1985.

2. Global Warming

Mar-23-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Watch the 32 second video, and see the temperatures over the last 130+ years. Juan Cole looks at the likely implications, and the OECD looks at the projected rise in greenhouse gases if nothing changes. Fair and balanced, we offer Faux News reporter Joe Bastardi’s opposing lunacies point of view. And a truly marvellous resource: 100 documentaries you can watch free online, from michael Moore, to Amy Goodman, to the Yes-men, to Noam Chomsky…

* Global Warming: 1880-2011 32 second visualization of annual temperatures

* 2010 Hottest Year on Record Juan Cole Informed Comment

The hottest year on record is 2010, not 1998, according to new calculations of the major British climate study unit….Since 1900, the average surface temperature of the earth has increased by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit, about .75 degrees C., because of the enormous amount of carbon dioxide and soot that industrial society is spewing into the atmosphere. Because of increasing carbon emissions, the earth is likely headed toward a 3-5 degree C. increase (5-7 degrees F.), which will over centuries melt all the surface ice, produce tropical conditions over the entire planet, and cause a sea level rise of dozens of meters/ yards. In the worst case scenario, a third of all land will be submerged.

New research on the Pliocine era has shown that even a 2 degree C. increase will likely cause a sea level rise of as much as 60-70 feet (20-23 meters). That would affect 70% of the earth’s inhabitants, hundreds of years down the road.

* O.E.C.D. Warns of Ever-Higher Greenhouse Gas Emissions New York Times

Global greenhouse gas emissions could rise 50 percent by 2050 without more ambitious climate policies, as fossil fuels continue to dominate the energy mix, theOrganization for Economic Cooperation and Developmentsaid Thursday. “Unless the global energy mix changes, fossil fuels will supply about 85 percent of energy demand in 2050, implying a 50 percent increase in greenhouse gas emissions and worsening urban air pollution,” the Paris-based O.E.C.D. said in its environment outlook to 2050 . The global economy in 2050 will be four times larger than today and the world will use around 80 percent more energy

* Fox News Science, Again Media Matters for America

“Completely wrong.” “Simply ignorant.” “Scientifically incorrect.” “Utter Nonsense.” “Very odd.” These are words scientists have used in the past to describe the nationally televised ramblings of weather forecaster Joe Bastardi, who Fox News hosts from time to time in an apparent effort to dismantle whatever its viewers might know about physics.

…Here he is on Fox Business this morning, declaring that carbon dioxide “literally cannot cause global warming”:

BASTARDI: CO2 cannot cause global warming. I’ll tell you why. It doesn’t mix well with the atmosphere, for one. For two, its specific gravity is 1 1/2 times that of the rest of the atmosphere. It heats and cools much quicker. Its radiative processes are much different. So it cannot — it literally cannot cause global warming.

Asked about Bastardi’s statements, Kerry Emanuel of MIT said: “Utter rubbish. Sorry to be so direct, but that is just the case.” NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt added: “Bastardi is attempting to throw out 150 years of physics.” “He seems very confused,” said physicist Richard Muller.

* Environmental Cinema: The Top 100 Documentaries Inspiring the Shift to a Sustainable Paradigm

Just imagine what could become possible if an entire city had seen just one of the documentaries below. Just imagine what would be possible if everyone in the country was aware of how unhealthy the mainstream media was for our future and started turning to independent sources in droves.

….Our society needs a new story to belong to. The old story of empire and dominion over the earth has to be looked at in the full light of day – all of our ambient cultural stories and values that we take for granted and which remain invisible must become visible…..So take this library of films and use it. Host film screenings, share these films with friends, buy and give copies to your elected officials and school faculty. Get this information out in to your community and you will be laying the foundation for a local movement for mass societal, environmental and economic change.

5. Right-Wingers, and the Denial of Reality

Mar-02-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Reality, as Stephen Colbert noted, has a well known liberal bias. That’s why right-wingers are trying to prevent reality from infiltrating their decisions. A US look at the denial of climate-change, two more examples of Canada’s “government” shooting messengers, and a brilliant Rick Mercer skit that sums it all up.

* Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science – and Reality Truthout (Thanks, Rick!)

Since about 1995, scientists have not only confirmed that this warming is taking place, but have also grown confident that it has, like the gun in a murder mystery, our fingerprint on it. Natural fluctuations, although they exist, can’t explain what we’re seeing. The only reasonable verdict is that humans did it, in the atmosphere, with their cars and their smokestacks.

Such is what is known to science–what is true (no matter what Rick Santorum might say). But the Pew data showed that humans aren’t as predictable as carbon dioxide molecules. Despite a growing scientific consensus about global warming, as of 2008 Democrats and Republicans had cleaved over the facts stated above, like a divorcing couple. One side bought into them, one side didn’t—and if anything, knowledge and intelligence seemed to be worsening matters.

Buried in the Pew report was a little chart showing the relationship between one’s political party affiliation, one’s acceptance that humans are causing global warming, and one’s level of education. And here’s the mind-blowing surprise: For Republicans, having a college degree didn’t appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans.

* Canada to lose its ‘PEARL’ of Arctic research

Canada’s most northerly research station is ceasing year-round operation, a “draconian” move decried by scientists both nationally and internationally. “Its closure shows a stunning lack of interest on the part of the Canadian government in long-term Arctic issues,” atmospheric scientist Jim Drummond, at Dalhousie University, said of the loss of the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory.

…A network of university and government researchers has operated the lab since 2005. It costs $1.5 million a year to run, but the federal government has eliminated the atmospheric research program that had been funding the operation. …“This loss comes at a highly significant time when Arctic conditions are changing rapidly: Witness the recent rapid loss of permafrost, the appearance of the first large Arctic ozone depletion last year and many other harbingers of significant Arctic change,” the researchers said in a statement Tuesday. “Without PEARL there will be no continuous active measurements in the High Arctic of many atmospheric quantities scientists believe greatly affect both our Arctic and the whole planet.”

* Ottawa Axes Network Of Immigration Research Centres Toronto Star

Ottawa plans to stop funding a research network whose findings have helped improve Canada’s immigration policies and settlement programs, the Star has learned. The federal government will not renew its $9 million, five-year funding to the five Metropolis research centres in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Edmonton and Halifax when the grant runs out in 2013.

Critics say the cut is another blow to researchers and community groups who have already lost the reliable data gleaned from the mandatory long-form census, which the Conservatives ended in 2010. “If you want to make policies based on opinions instead of what the facts are, you get rid of the facts,” said John Campey, of Social Planning Toronto, which founded the Ontario centre in 1996,

* PMO Pest Control Rick Mercer Report YouTube (Thanks, Dave!)

5. The Power of Money

Feb-24-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: It’s 40 years since Alan Price sang “We all want justice, but you’ve got to have the money to buy it.” (in Lindsey Anderson’s epic film: O Lucky Man!) But things have changed, and now you can buy anything with money, not just justice. We start with a look at who the players are, the six mediopolies that control what we see and hear. We look at two pieces on how the very rich, the .01%, buy the presidency; and we end with a look at how they control the “facts” taught in school.

* Illusion of Choice Nation of Change (click through to enlarge chart)

Media has never been more consolidated. 6 media giants now control a staggering 90% of what we read, watch or listen to.

* Casino King Provides 84 Percent of Funds for Pro-Gingrich Super PAC NationofChange

Casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and his family have pumped $11 million into the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC “Winning Our Future,” about 84 percent of the $13.1 million the group has raised so far.

And that doesn’t include the additional $10 million sources say the multibillionaire is expected to kick in to help his political ally and friend Gingrich become competitive again. Gingrich has fallen behind the two frontrunners, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and ex-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, in national polls….

Without the Adelsons’ largesse, the PAC has raised $2.1 million.

* Super PACs Out-Raise Candidates, Thanks to Super Donors NationofChange

Thanks to a small number of wealthy individuals, the outside spending groups known as “super PACs” that are working to put the four leading GOP candidates in the White House collectively raised more than the candidates themselves in January.

Candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul raised a combined $21.1 million for the month, according to Federal Election Commission records, while the four primary super PACs backing them raised $22.1 million. Donors to candidates number in the thousands, but they may only give $2,500 per candidate, per election. Super PAC donors, thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision and a lower-cour ruling, can give unlimited amounts.

* From the Heartland: The Extreme Right’s War on K-12 Climate and Environmental Education Wildlife Promise

America’s extreme right has been attacking climate change and environmental education in schools for decades using a variety of tactics aimed at keeping it from becoming core knowledge our children have upon graduation.

The recent revelation that the Heartland Institute was pledged $100,000 in anonymous funds to develop a K-12 school curriculum to inject how controversial climate change science is is just one of these tactics.

It has been alleged, per a set of leaked internal documents, that the Institute, a free-market policy and advocacy organization, is again working to undermine K-12 climate change education. The leaked documents, which Heartland claims were illegally leaked and faked, are not needed to examine consistent tactics used by the extreme right to keep sound and needed climate change education out of America’s K-12 classrooms.

…The National Wildlife Federation today received a cease and desist letter from the Heartland Institute demanding that all references to Heartland’s so-called “Denialgate” leaked internal documents be scrubbed from the National Wildlife Federation website. However, the letter makes no specific legal accusations and the Heartland Institute continues to refuse to say whether the documents are legitimate, whether its reported plan to infiltrate America’s schools is true, or who is funding it.

11. Eyecandy: Ne Plus Ultra

Feb-10-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Pictures of extreme festivals, freezes, rivers, and ancient things.

* Deep Freeze Spreads Across Europe In Focus

* 9 Rivers of Superlatives The World Geography

* 22 Incredibly Old Living Things

Rachel Sussman has been traveling the world for the past few years photographing some of the oldest living things on Earth. Here’s a look at some of what she’s found.

* Chinese Lantern Festival 2012 In Focus

9. Antarctica

Feb-03-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Learn more about Lake Vostok on Wikipedia: the third largest lake in the world, hidden under two miles of ice. It should be drilled into this week, and there’s the opening scene of your horror film, as out of it climbs Cthulhu… But the horror of that pales to nothing when you read about the most terrible polar expedition ever, as described by its sole survivor. And welcome our new giant crab overlords, as over a million start colonizing Antarctic waters.

* Scientists Close To Entering Vostok, Antarctica’s Biggest Subglacial Lake Washington Post

After drilling for two decades through more than two miles of antarctic ice, Russian scientists are on the verge of entering a vast, dark lake that hasn’t been touched by light for more than 20 million years….If the Russians break through as planned within the next week, it will cap more than 50 years of research in what are considered the harshest conditions in the world — where the surface temperatures drop to 100 degrees below zero. ….Vostok, which is about the size of New Jersey, is the world’s third-largest lake by volume of water. Priscu said the gas in the lake makes it like a can of carbonated soda: Open it under high pressure, and it will spurt out.

He said the doomsday scenario for the Russian breakthrough would be if the suddenly released water pushed its way past machinery to block it and shot up the borehole, which is six to eight inches in diameter at the top. The result, he said, could be an enormous geyser that could empty a quarter of the lake. Priscu said he didn’t expect that to happen, but if it did, the sudden addition of substantial water vapor to the antarctic atmosphere could change the continent’s weather in unpredictable ways.

* The Most Terrible Polar Exploration Ever The Smithsonian Magazine

Even today, with advanced foods, and radios, and insulated clothing, a journey on foot across Antarctica is one of the harshest tests a human being can be asked to endure. A hundred years ago, it was worse. Then, wool clothing absorbed snow and damp. High-energy food came in an unappetizing mix of rendered fats called pemmican. Worst of all, extremes of cold pervaded everything; Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who sailed with Captain Scott’s doomed South Pole expedition of 1910-13, recalled that his teeth, “the nerves of which had been killed, split to pieces” and fell victim to temperatures that plunged as low as -77 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cherry-Garrard survived to write an account of his adventures, a book he titled The Worst Journey in the World. But even his Antarctic trek—made in total darkness in the depths of the Southern winter—was not quite so appalling as the desperate march faced one year later by the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson. Mawson’s journey has gone down in the annals of polar exploration as probably the most terrible ever undertaken in Antarctica.

* Climate Change Sees Giant Crabs Invade The Antarctic The Independent

King crabs up to a metre across have invaded deep waters on the edge of Antarctica, probably because of climate warming, and are playing havoc with the seabed wildlife, according to a new report. More than a million of the crabs are thought to have colonised the Palmer Deep, a basin more than 4,300ft down off the Antarctic Peninsula, where they are wiping out species such as sea cucumbers, sea urchins and starfish.

6. Enemies of the (Canadian) State

Jan-27-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Two examples of how the Canadian Government™ (a registered trade-mark of the Conservative Party of Canada) is demonizing anyone who opposes their policies. This is wrong on so many levels… but you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t agree. There are two links through which you can share your views with the government on this policy.

* The Man Who Crushed the Keystone XL Pipeline Boston Globe

He certainly has impeccable timing. From “stop coal” protests to the Occupy encampments, something stirred in America late last year, and McKibben sensed it. “He has caught the wind of the environmental movement and will help the movement regain its footing,” says John Adams, cofounder of the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council and recipient of the 2010 Presidential Medal of Freedom. “He is soon to be known – if he isn’t already – as one of the top environmental leaders in the country.” Or, as Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune puts it: “He hasn’t quite broken through to the world of US Weekly and Teen Beat, but give him time. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few years from now my daughter has posters of Bill McKibben up on the wall.”

It might not even take that long. Four days after the Keystone protest, Barack Obama postponed a decision on the pipeline until 2013. McKibben promptly declared the pipeline dead, tweeting, “a done deal has come spectacularly undone!”..McKibben and his Keystone protests put a finger in this one particular dike, at least temporarily, and got an environmental cause on the Colbert Report. And that was just the beginning. America, it seems, is about to have a McKibben Moment.

* Why I’m Worried about my trip to Canada. Bill McKibbon 350.org

I’ve been visiting Canada all my life, but I’m a little worried about my upcoming trip.

In late March I’m supposed to come to Vancouver to give a couple of talks. But now I read that Joe Oliver, your country’s Minister of Natural Resources, is condemning “environmental and other radical groups that would seek to block” Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline from the oil sands of Alberta to the Pacific.

I think he’s talking about people like me.

So I’m pushing back a bit, and I need your help. Let’s tell Joe Oliver that preventing the combustion of the second-largest pool of carbon on the planet isn’t “radical” — it’s exactly the opposite. It’s rational. It’s responsible. And it’s just plain right.

Click here to sign the petition to Prime Minister Harper and Joe Oliver, and help show that Canadians everywhere are committed to stopping the oil sands.

* Prime Minister’s Office Tried to Silence Enbridge Gateway Pipeline Critic (Thanks Kyla)

The Prime Minister’s Office tried to cut funding of a registered intervenor in the Enbridge Pipeline Review, calling ForestEthics Canada an, “Enemy of the Government of Canada” and an, “Enemy of the People of Canada”, according to allegations detailed in a sworn affidavit, dated January 23, 2012.

Sworn by Andrew Frank, former Senior Communications Manager with ForestEthics Canada, and an instructor in the Environmental Protection Technology program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the affidavit cites three senior managers with Tides Canada and ForestEthics, as well as personal email correspondence.

“Today, I am taking the extraordinary step of risking my career, my reputation and my personal friendships, to act as a whistleblower and expose the undemocratic and potentially illegal pressure the Harper government has apparently applied to silence critics of the Enbridge Northern Gateway oil tanker/pipeline plan,” says Frank. “Canadian citizens will be shocked to learn that their own government is labelling critics of the Enbridge oil tanker/pipeline project, ‘Enemies of the Government of Canada’. When a government starts labelling its own citizens ‘enemies’, it has lost its moral authority to govern.”

* Are You An “Enemy Of The Government Of Canada”? Leadnow

This week, we learned that the Harper Government is using closed-door intimidation tactics against Canadian charities. They’re trying to silence groups that question our government’s plans to push the Enbridge western pipeline and supertankers project through overwhelming local opposition, and recklessly expand the tar sands at all costs.
According to the whistleblower, a former senior communications manager for ForestEthics named Andrew Frank, the Prime Minister’s Office told Tides Canada they consider ForestEthics to be an “enemy of the Government of Canada” because of the group’s opposition to the Enbridge pipeline and tar sands expansion

Click here to tell Prime Minister Harper to stop the threats and ensure fair hearings for Canadians,

2. Followups: Durban, Ron Paul, Canada’s Kyoto Cut

Dec-23-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: A trio of followups to last week: Monbiot contrasts governments swift action to save banks as opposed to their reluctance to save the planet. Curious, that. Ron Paul, currently leading Iowa polls, was omitted last week from our GOP smackdown. While the good doctor is rational, he is no less insane than his partners in grime, and Monbiot explores where his policies lead us. And while we covered Canada’s flight from Kyoto, we didn’t fully dissect Harpo’s claim that this would save Canada money. Well, it won’t.

* Why Is It So Easy to Save the Banks – but So Hard to Save the Biosphere? George Monbiot Common Dreams

They bailed out the banks in days. But even deciding to bail out the planet is taking decades.

Nicholas Stern estimated that capping climate change would cost around 1% of global GDP, while sitting back and letting it hit us would cost between 5 and 20%. One per cent of GDP is, at the moment, $630bn. By March 2009, Bloomberg has revealed, the US Federal Reserve had committed $7.77 trillion to the banks. That is just one government’s contribution: yet it amounts to 12 times the annual global climate change bill. Add the bailouts in other countries, and it rises several more times.

This support was issued on demand: as soon as the banks said they wanted help, they got it. On just one day the Federal Reserve made $1.2tr available – more than the world has committed to tackling climate change in 20 years.

* This Bastardised Libertarianism Makes ‘Freedom’ An Instrument Of Oppression George Monbiot The Guardian

Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor.

* Canada’s Kyoto Math Doesn’t Add Up Pembina Institute (Thanks, Dave!)

It wasn’t particularly surprising to hear that Canada is withdrawing. Minister Kent’s painful efforts to neither confirm nor deny rumours of Canada’s intentions made it perfectly clear what those intentions were. Nor was it news that Canada will miss its Kyoto commitments to reduce emissions by a wide margin: a complete lack of effort on the part of Liberal and Conservative governments alike gave our country no chance of meeting them.

What was surprising was the Minister’s attempt to spin this withdrawal as a positive step for Canada’s economy. While taking action on climate change does come with costs, they are entirely manageable. The costs of inaction — in Canada, let alone on a global scale — are not….“Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment avoided before 2020, an additional $4.3 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”

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