Climate change: A guide for the perplexed  

New Scientist has a great roundup of articles debunking various myths spread by global warming deniers. See the original for a raft of links.

ur planet's climate is anything but simple. All kinds of factors influence it, from massive events on the Sun to the growth of microscopic creatures in the oceans, and there are subtle interactions between many of these factors.

Yet despite all the complexities, a firm and ever-growing body of evidence points to a clear picture: the world is warming, this warming is due to human activity increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and if emissions continue unabated the warming will too, with increasingly serious consequences.

Yes, there are still big uncertainties in some predictions, but these swing both ways. For example, the response of clouds could slow the warming or speed it up.

With so much at stake, it is right that climate science is subjected to the most intense scrutiny. What does not help is for the real issues to be muddied by discredited arguments or wild theories.

So for those who are not sure what to believe, here is our round-up of the 26 most common climate myths and misconceptions.

There is also a guide to assessing the evidence. In the articles we've included lots of links to primary research and major reports for those who want to follow through to the original sources.

• Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter
• We can't do anything about climate change
• The 'hockey stick' graph has been proven wrong
• Chaotic systems are not predictable
• We can't trust computer models of climate
• They predicted global cooling in the 1970s
• It's been far warmer in the past, what's the big deal?
• It's too cold where I live - warming will be great
• Global warming is down to the Sun, not humans
• It’s all down to cosmic rays
• CO2 isn't the most important greenhouse gas
• The lower atmosphere is cooling, not warming
• Antarctica is getting cooler, not warmer, disproving global warming
• The oceans are cooling
• The cooling after 1940 shows CO2 does not cause warming
• It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England
• We are simply recovering from the Little Ice Age
• Warming will cause an ice age in Europe
• Ice cores show CO2 increases lag behind temperature rises, disproving the link to global warming
• Ice cores show CO2 rising as temperatures fell
• Mars and Pluto are warming too
• Many leading scientists question climate change
• It's all a conspiracy
• Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming
• Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production
• Polar bear numbers are increasing

Rob at Entropy Production has a detailed look at The Glittering Future of Solar Power. More commentary at Grist and the WSJ Energy Roundup. Rob projects that solar PV could supply all our energy needs, which may be over-optimistic - but I'd only expect PV to provide maybe 25% of our powers anyway, with wind, solar thermal, geothermal, tidal/wave and hydro power supplying the rest.

Photovoltaic cells are not like any other method humanity uses to collect and use energy. Existing techniques extract energy either from mechanical motion (wind, hydroelectric, tidal) or heat differentials (fossil fuels, nuclear, solar-thermal). Whereas all these systems produce useful work by the turning of a shaft (usually to spin photovoltaics convert sunlight directly into direct-current electricity. While photovoltaics are still beholden to the laws of thermodynamics and entropy, the difference still implies that they abide by difference rules. In particular, they have a total absence of moving parts and as a result are almost free of maintenance requirements. Photovoltaic cells degrade in performance only very slowly as they are bombarded by cosmic rays. Most manufacturers offer warranties that guarantee they will still reach 80% of their rated power output after 25-years. ...

Solar production hasn't been growing at 3.2% per year. It has, in fact, been growing at 33% per annum for the last decade, and it's expected to continue that trend for the immediate future. ... while the impact of solar may be trivial now, it will not be over the next 25 years. If solar can maintain the same growth rate is has for the past decade, solar can supply all of mankind's projected electricity demands 26 years from now. ...

The learning rate of photovoltaics is much higher than that of other energy technologies. In fact, it's more in-line with things like computers or DVD players. ... The small incremental nature of photovoltaics is a major advantage from a R&D perspective, as I've described previously. While coal and nuclear power plants are installed in increments of hundreds or thousands of megawatts, solar panels are measured in the hundreds of watts. Thus while a design change to a nuclear power plant can take a decade or more to manifest itself, solar manufacturers can do this in weeks. As a result, photovoltaic technology will go through hundreds of design revisions in the time it takes coal or nuclear plants to go through one. ...

Intermittency is the problem that renewable energy sources suffer from due to the natural fluctuations of their power source. Any transmission grid that relies on renewable sources as a primary input will require a substantial amount of storage, deferrable demand, or load-following spare capacity. The severity of intermittency can be thought of as a combination of its predictability, correlation to demand, and variance. Compared to its chief competitor, wind, solar is far more predictable. ...

It is my opinion that the concern over intermittency of solar power is exaggerated. This is due to the fact that the learning rate of photovoltaics dictates that the cost of solar will fall below that of the main established sources of power (coal, nuclear) well before solar will constitute a significant fraction of our energy consumption. I think most people will agree, when the price of solar energy drops below that of the competition, the game changes. When you have power to burn, simple and low-capital techniques of storing or transmitting solar electricity become practical. At $0.05/kWh solar would have a margin of $0.04/kWh or more to work within for charging electric vehicles, filling deferrable demand, storage techniques such as Vanadium redox batteries, or long distance high-voltage direct-current transmission.

Conclusions

Many people will look at the graphs in disbelief that the easy path photovoltaic power has been travelling can continue. All I can really say in reply is, those are the historical numbers. The learning rate is exceptionally stable. The growth rate has been, if anything, accelerating in the face of a industry silicon shortage. Thin-film technologies seem well positioned to cause the price to continue to fail into the near future. Solar power doesn't have very far to fall in many European nations before it's cheaper than residential rates. As residential solar becomes the cheapest power available that will continue to push demand upward and fuel growth. There's nothing obvious to me that says 'Stop' in solar's future and it's a fact of exponential growth that the early years matter the most. Even if the growth rate drops 1 % a year over the next 25-years the eventually outcome seems predetermined, it's just a question of the timing.

One the subject of solar power, Space.com has an article from Al Globus on space solar power. Like the helium 3 idea, this looks like a work program for aerospace engineers and its probably not a great idea from a global warming point of view either (though obviously its still better than coal).

Suppose I told you that we could build an energy source that:

* unlike oil, does not generate profits used to support Al Qaeda and dictatorial regimes.
* unlike nuclear, does not provide cover for rogue nations to hide development of nuclear weapons.
* unlike terrestrial solar and wind, is available 24/7 in huge quantities.
* unlike oil, gas, ethanol and coal, does not emit greenhouse gasses, warming our planet and causing severe problems.
* unlike nuclear, does not provide tremendous opportunities for terrorists.
* unlike coal and nuclear, does not require ripping up the Earth.
* unlike oil, does not lead us to send hundreds of thousands of our finest men and women to war and spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on a military presence in the Persian Gulf.

The basic idea: build huge satellites in Earth orbit to gather sunlight, convert it to electricity, and beam the energy to Earth using microwaves. We know we can do it, most satellites are powered by solar energy today and microwave beaming of energy has been demonstrated with very high efficiency. We're talking about SSP - solar satellite power. ...

The catch is cost. Compared to ground based energy, SSP requires enormous up-front expense, although after development of a largely-automated system to build solar power satellites from lunar materials SSP should be quite inexpensive. To get there, however, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars in R&D and infrastructure development - just what America is good at. And you know something, we're spending that kind of money, not to mention blood, on America's Persian Gulf military presence today, and gas went over $3/gallon anyway. In addition, we may end up spending even more to deal with global warming, at least in the worst-case scenarios. Expensive as it is, SSP may be the best bargain we've ever had.

What should we do? Besides having NASA do interesting and inspiring things, direct and fund NASA to do something vital: end U.S. dependence on foreign oil by developing SSP. Redirect the lunar base to do the mining, and develop the launch vehicles, inter-orbit transfer, and space manufacturing capacity to end oil's energy dominance completely and forever. It will be expensive, but it's a better, cheaper, safer strategy than military control of oil in far flung lands.

Oh, by the way, SSP will develop lunar mining, launch vehicles, and large satellite construction - most of what we need to build space settlements!

AFP has an article on a new wave power project to provide both baseload power and and fresh water to Australian cities. Somewhat to my amazement, the government is actually in favour of it.

New technology harnessing wave energy could be the "holy grail" for providing electricity and drinking water to Australia's major cities, Industry Minister Ian MacFarlane said Thursday.

The technology, developed with the help of more than 770 million dollars (636 million US) in seed funding from the government, works through fields of submerged buoys tethered to seabed pumps. The buoys move in harmony with the motion of the passing waves, pumping pressurised seawater to shore to run turbines and pass through a desalination plant.

"The constancy of the waves even when the surface is dead calm means that you can build a base load renewable energy power station and that is really the holy grail for us, if you can produce renewable energy 24/7," Macfarlane told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Drought-ravaged Australia is the driest inhabited continent on earth and the desalination of seawater is seen as one way of ensuring long-term water supplies for the big cities, which are all on the coast. But with the process requiring large amounts of energy and Australia also trying to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming, the technology is seen as providing a double benefit.

The Perth-based Carnegie Corporation which developed the technology advised the Australian stock exchange Thursday of its "proposal for a world-first base-load renewable energy power station and zero emission desalination plant." After successful trials, the CETO system, was on track to begin full scale deployment off southern capital cities in 2009, said Carnegie managing director, Michael Ottaviano.

Australia was uniquely positioned to take advantage of the technology for both its power and water needs, he said. All of Australia's southern mainland citiesÂ’ current water needs could be satisfied by CETO units covering an area of 155 hectares (about 70 football fields) of sea floor at around 75 percent of the price of current desalination projects, the statement said.

In addition, the "Wave Farms" would generate around 300 megawatts of zero-emission power, enough for about 300,000 households.

MArketWatch has an article on the lengths tech firms are going to to manage a dramatic surge in power costs.

In the computer data centers of America's largest corporations and Internet service providers, the heat is on -- literally. Kieran Taylor, director of product management for Web-services provider Akamai Technologies Inc., can tell you. He gets calls "every week" from frantic network managers at big companies who've either exceeded their electricity budgets for the year or run out of room for even one more server in their facilities.


That's a dramatic shift from earlier this decade, when Akamai's customers were mostly busy Web sites needing to move huge files or better manage periodic spikes in Internet traffic.

"IT managers were told to rack and stack the hardware to meet their business needs," said Taylor, who's been at Cambridge, Mass.-based Akamai since 1999. "But that has a cost."

That cost's magnitude is only now becoming obvious, and painful, to power-hungry technology firms, according to Taylor and a dozen others interviewed for this story Silicon Valley-based companies like eBay and Google are seeing their energy use increase by 20% to 40% annually, according to their utility, Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. The cost of such a power surge is having a direct impact on the buying decisions, operational plans, and research-and-development efforts at large tech firms from Boston to Austin to San Francisco.


Companies are shopping for more efficient hardware and embracing new technologies such as virtualization, which boosts network capacity with server software. The virtualization-software business of No. 1 storage-equipment maker EMC Corp. is growing so fast, in fact, that the firm plans to spin out its VMware unit in an IPO later this year.


The increase in IT power use is "quite dramatic -- it's become the biggest expense of any data center, period," said Roland Van der Meer, a venture capitalist with the Silicon Valley firm ComVentures, which has backed Broadcom Corp.; Ascend Communications, which is now part of Alcatel-Lucent and other tech start-ups that either went public or were acquired.

And the warming trend is already having ripple effects that go beyond the information-technology business.
In response to soaring costs, Google -- which by some estimates operates a million servers, compared with the 20,000 run by Akamai -- and others are locating their data centers in out-of-the-way locations to take advantage of cheaper power. ...

The utility PG&E is currently reviewing applications for two data centers planned for the San Francisco Bay Area that will each use 20 megawatts of power "around the clock," said Mark Bramfitt, who runs PG&E's data-center efficiency programs. That's enough to power between 60,000 and 80,000 homes.

Energy Bulletin has a small Terra Preta roundup, pointing to a Scientific American article and Erich Knight's web site.

When Desmond Radlein heard about Richard Branson and Al Gore's Virgin Earth Challenge, a contest in which the first person who can sequester one billion tons of carbon dioxide a year wins $25 million, he got out his pencil and began figuring whether or not his company was up to the task.

Radlein is on the board of directors at Dynamotive Energy Systems, an energy solutions provider based in Vancouver, British Columbia, that is one of several companies pioneering the use of pyrolysis, a process in which biomass is burned at a high temperature in the absence of oxygen. The process yields both a charcoal by-product that can be used as a fertilizer, and bio-oil, which is a mix of oxygenated hydrocarbons that can be used to generate heat or electricity.

Because the charcoal by-product, or "agrichar," does not readily break down, it could sequester for thousands of years nearly all the carbon it contains, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Along the way, it would boost agricultural productivity through its ability to retain nutrients and moisture.

"I developed this rough back-of-the-envelope calculation of what it would require if one were to [attempt the Virgin Earth Challenge] with the agrichar concept," Radlein explains. "One would need about 7,000 plants each processing 500 tons of biomass per day, which is a large number, but it's not outside the bounds of possibility." Such facilities would produce four parts bio-oil to one part carbon sequestered, so it would rake in money as well as carbon.

Radlein is not alone in his belief in this technology-last week in Terrigal, New South Wales, Australia, the newly formed International Agrichar Initiative held its first ever conference, which included 135 attendees from every corner of the globe. According to Debbie Reed, an environmental policy expert who organized the conference, keynote speaker Mike Mason of the carbon offset company Climate Care urged attendees to unify in an effort to apply for the Virgin Earth Challenge. He also encouraged them to submit their method to the United Nations's Clean Development Mechanism program, which is designed to transfer clean technology from the developed to the developing world.

Although no officials from the U.S. government attended the conference, there is a nascent stateside movement pushing for adoption of agrichar. "[Democratic Senator] Ken Salazar of Colorado is drafting a stand-alone bill on this, and he may also promote it as part of the Farm Bill," notes Reed. The Farm Bill, whose terms are decided every year, determines what agricultural initiatives can be funded by the U.S. government. Inclusion in the Farm Bill would virtually guarantee subsidies for research and application of the agrichar process.

A Technology with a (Potentially) Huge Upside

In 2100, if pyrolysis met the entire projected demand for renewable fuels, the process would sequester enough carbon (9.5 billion tons a year) to offset current fossil fuel emissions, which stand at 5.4 billion tons a year, and then some. "Even if only a third of the bioenergy in 2100 uses pyrolysis, we still would make a huge splash with this technology," remarks Johannes Lehmann, a soil biogeochemist at Cornell University and one of the organizers of the agrichar conference.

There are other perks: Increasing production of bio-oil could decrease a country's dependence on foreign oil. In the tropics, boosting soil productivity increases the number of growing seasons per year, which could help alleviate the pressure to deforest biodiversity hot spots. The new markets for agricultural crops, which would in effect become sources of fuel, could boost rural economies worldwide, just as the demand for ethanol has bolstered the price of corn.

Bruce's latest Viridian Note is out, looking at Austin Green Capitalism. As usual, Bruce's interjections are marked with ((())).

The first and possibly not-only Clean Energy Venture Summit, which planned for 300 attendees and got 400, me included.
http://www.cleanenergyventuresummit.com/

The Austin Clean Energy Incubator, braintrust of the event.
http://www.cleanenergyincubator.org/

Austin Technology Incubator. http://ati.ic2.org/

Letter from the Mayor of Austin, who has a degree in environmental design:

"To the Guests of the Clean Energy Venture Summit:

"I'm pleased to welcome you to Austin for the inaugural Clean Energy Venture Summit. I believe you will find Austin a unique place, ideally suited for the development of the cleantech industry."

Link:
(((Where the Mayor of Austin went instead of attending this local biz event: The Large Cities Climate Summit.)))
http://www.nycclimatesummit.com/

"In Austin, we have a long tradition of creativity, entrepreneurialism and respect for our natural environment. It's the nexus of these traditions that has resulted in Austin recently being named the nation's top city for cleantech development." (((Yeah, take that, Green San Francisco, Green LA, Green Chicago, Green Seattle, and Green New York.)))

"What sets Austin apart from many cities striving to foster cleantech industry is the exceptional combination of resources we're bringing together to help us achieve our goals. The Austin team includes our municipally owned Austin Energy, unquestionably the most progressive utility in the nation; the Clean Energy Incubator, the first ever of its kind; the University of Texas, with its breadth and depth of knowledge; and the citizens of Austin == our most important resource of all.

"The Austin City Council recently adopted some of the most ambitious clean energy and energy efficiency targets in the nation. To achieve our goals, we will need new technologies to help us meet the growing energy demands of our rapidly growing community.

"Our plan is to build the cleantech industry of the future == and that means attracting the right talent, applying the right resources and leveraging a great team to achieve this. I invite you to play a role in this important endeavor. Together, we can build a tomorrow as limitless as our creativity and vision will allow. Regards, Mayor Will Wynn"

(((If you'd told me ten years ago that the Mayor of my home town would be indulging in this kind of rhetoric, I would have been turning cartwheels. The Clean Energy Venture Summit was an intensely dull event. There was scarcely a "visionary" to be seen. On the contrary: suited, duely-diligent lawyers and bankers were throwing millions of dollars at engineers. That's the work of the world, folks. This is our third swing at this particular baseball: 1970s: eco-consciousness raising; 1990s, global political accords; 2010s, cybergreen ecotech. They gotta win, they must not fail, because otherwise, by the 2030s it's gonna be Khaki Green all the way: a future of All Katrina, all the time, for everybody.)))

(((I conveyed these bracing sentiments to the attendees. I then went to my Austin home to find a tree in my yard freshly blasted by a massive lightning storm. As a Viridian guru, I'm pretty much getting what I begged for here. But, just like everybody else under our planet's overheated skies, I'm gonna pay a price.)))

Link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/45506355@N00/502244707/

The corporate darlings of the event (for you boisterous tech investors out there):

AgiLight:
http://www.agilight.com/
"The AgiLight Team brings a combined 50+ years of experience in the electronics and solid state lighting industry and has tremendous experience in manufacturing, sourcing, material science, and product integration of LED and other electronics solutions."

Ausra.
http://www.ausra.com/
"Ausra, Inc. is developing large-scale solar electric power parks. Endless electrical energy at affordable prices without carbon emissions is now possible due to our breakthroughs in the design of concentrating solar power systems."

PCN Technologies.
http://www.pcntechnologies.com "PCN Technology, Inc. (PCN) designs, develops and markets advanced I/O subsystem components that leverage existing energy systems of products, devices, machinery, and installations in order to transmit triple play data.PCN products interoperate with legacy and new systems eliminating or decreasing communication hardwire in order to provide alternative RF wireless communication, convergence, and networking for companies & applications having critical needs for secure, reliable, robust data transmission."

SolBeam.
http://www.ngenpartners.com "SolBeam markets and sells concentrating photovoltaic systems."

AccuWater.
http://www.accuwater.com/
"AccuWater delivers products and Internet-based services that enable property owners to optimize landscape irrigation using landscape modelling and local weather conditions."

(((And, as they like to say, "many others.")))

Austin Energy's political pitch: a shotgun marriage of electrical utilities and a (somewhat imaginary) hybrid fleet of American plug-in cars.

Link:
http://www.pluginpartners.org/ "Plug-In Partners is a national grass-roots initiative to demonstrate to automakers that a market for flexible-fuel Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) exists today. Plug In Hybrid Electric Vehicles can reduce dependence on foreign oil, decrease greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, lower fuel costs, make American agriculture a fuel source, save and created American jobs, and increase use of renewable energy."

Media sponsors: GreenBiz, GreenerBuildings, ep Overviews Daily Report, Inside GreenTech, and Red Herring.
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IT TOOK A WHILE, BUT THEY'RE MOVING AS FAST
AS THEY CAN THROW THE CASH... AND BESIDES,
IT'S SOMETHING OF A PRIVILEGE
TO HAVE LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO SEE THIS!
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There are numerous reports that the southern ocean has lost its ability to soak up carbon emissions - see the BBC, SMH and CNN. Scientists believe global warming is accelerating more rapidly as a result.

One of Earth's most important absorbers of carbon dioxide (CO2) is failing to soak up as much of the greenhouse gas as it was expected to, scientists say.

The decline of Antarctica's Southern Ocean carbon "sink" - or reservoir - means that atmospheric CO2 levels may be higher in future than predicted. These carbon sinks are vital as they mop up excess CO2 from the atmosphere, slowing down global warming. The study, by an international team, is published in the journal Science.

This effect had been predicted by climate scientists, and is taken into account - to some extent - by climate models. But it appears to be happening 40 years ahead of schedule.

The data will help refine models of the Earth's climate, including those upon which the predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based. Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks. There are two major natural carbon sinks: the oceans and the land "biosphere". They are equivalent in size, each absorbing a quarter of all CO2 emissions. The Southern Ocean is thought to account for about 15% of all carbon sinks.

It was assumed that, as human activities released more CO2 into the atmosphere, ocean sinks would keep pace, absorbing a comparable percentage of this greenhouse gas.

The breakdown in efficiency of these sinks was an expected outcome, but not until the second half of the 21st Century. Lead researcher Corinne Le Quere and colleagues collected atmospheric CO2 data from 11 stations in the Southern Ocean and 40 stations across the globe. Measurements of atmospheric CO2 allowed them to infer how much carbon dioxide was taken up by sinks. The team was then able to see how efficient they were in comparison to one another at absorbing CO2.

"Ever since observations started in 1981, we see that the sinks have not increased [in their absorption of CO2]," Corinne LeQuere told the BBC's Science in Action programme. "They have remained the same as they were 24 years ago even though the emissions have risen by 40%."

TreeHugger has a post on "The Burn Belt - "Fire Predictions For 'Out West'".

To match what we have been seeing ourselves, The U.S.D.A. Forest Service and Oregon State University researchers are predicting the Western U.S. is in for a 'fairly severe' fire season this year. The widespread drought throughout the region, along with 50 years of moderate weather have left large quantities of dried biomass, often called 'fuel'. Efforts to reduce biomass through thinning have been talked about for years, but no large-scale efforts have evolved to counteract the matter.

There may be some nasty fires this year, and the research points specifically to the American Southwest, including California, Arizona, New Mexico, and the Great Basin. But, don't feel bad- there is a lot you can do. If you live 'out West', a good idea is to clear brush from around your house, and contact your local fire department for other prevention techniques that fit with your area. If you live East of the Rockies, you don't have to worry as much (about the fire at least), as it is expected to be a wetter than normal year 'back East'.

TreeHugger also notes (in a common theme this week) that "Scary Warnings Promote Apathy, Not Action". Hear that doomers ?

Professor Mike Hulme, of the Tyndall Centre at the UEA (my alma mater), has conducted research on attitudes to climate change warnings in the media. "There has been over-claiming or exaggeration, or at the very least casual use of language by scientists, some of whom are quite prominent," he told the BBC. He believes that the sensationalist warnings often given by the media lead to apathy rather than action. People subjected to the "Hollywoodisation" of climate change tended to think that it was inevitable, and beyond their capability to affect. A more sober approach would be more effective, he argues.
Is it better to shock people, or to give them the facts? I think that certain people will be pushed into action by worrying news reports, but sinking the whole world into an environmental-doom-depression is very counter-productive.

Here's a TED Talk from Stewart Brand on how cities are defusing the population bomb.



Greenpeace are running a campaign against the opening of the Anvil Hill coal mine.

Anvil Hill is under threat from a proposed coal mine, which the NSW government looks set to approve. The mine will destroy remnant bushland, displace hundreds of people and fuel dangerous climate change. We need you to help us send a clear message to the NSW Premier Morris Iemma asking for a moratorium on all new coal mines and to reject the Anvil Hill proposal.

On the weekend of 2-3 June 2007 we want as many people as possible to peacefully protest against the proposed mine The weekend will be a family friendly gathering with tours of the mine site, films, music and more. You can camp on Saturday night if you want or stay in the nearby village of Denman. There will be cooking facilities, but also cheap food provided (including vegetarian options). Then, on Sunday 3rd June at midday we will form a human sign reading ‘Save Anvil Hill’ near the proposed mine site. The more people we get, the stronger the message to our politicians and the coal industry that we must save Anvil Hill and our climate from coal.

If you can’t make it to the event, email Mr Iemma asking for a moratorium on all new coal mines and to reject the Anvil Hill proposal.

The Australian reports that the Drought could leave Tasmania powerless.

TASMANIA may face crippling power shortages by the end of the year if the drought intensifies. National Electricity Market Management Company sources said widespread blackouts in Tasmania were inevitable if the rest of the year was as dry as it had been in parts of the mainland.

Tasmania is expected to need 8000 gigawatt hours of power between now and December, but NEMMCO said supplies would fall short if rainfall was scant. Tasmania has three main sources of power. Hydro Tasmania has capacity of 2600GWh in its dams, which are at near-record low levels of 18per cent. Tasmania will be able to use 1500GWh from the gas-fired Bell Bay power station over the rest of this year, and can import 2500GWh from the Basslink Interconnector, the power cable linking the island to Victoria.

But the issue is complicated by Tasmania importing 1400GWh from Basslink in the 12 months to April - the cable's first year of operation. NEMMCO sources said Tasmania exported 500GWh to Basslink over the same period, a move that offset the cost of imports but prevented the state from importing an additional 800GWh under Basslink's complicated marketing arrangements.

Without the exports, the capacity of the hydro dams would be 50 per cent higher.

Orion Magazine has a look at plastic in "Polymers Are Forever" (via Energy Bulletin).

“Plastics haven’t been around long enough for microbes to develop the enzymes to handle it, so they can only biodegrade the very-low-molecular-weight part of the plastic”-meaning, the smallest, already broken polymer chains. Although truly biodegradable plastics derived from natural plant sugars have appeared, as well as biodegradable polyester made from bacteria, the chances of them replacing the petroleum-based originals aren’t great.

“Since the idea of packaging is to protect food from bacteria,” Andrady observes, “wrapping leftovers in plastic that encourages microbes to eat it may not be the smartest thing to do.”

But even if it worked, or even if humans were gone and never produced another nurdle, all the plastic already produced would remain-how long?

“Egyptian pyramids have preserved corn, seeds, and even human parts such as hair because they were sealed away from sunlight with little oxygen or moisture,” says Andrady, a mild, precise man with a broad face and a clipped, persuasively reasonable voice. “Our waste dumps are somewhat like that. Plastic buried where there’s little water, sun, or oxygen will stay intact a long time. That is also true if it is sunk in the ocean, covered with sediment. At the bottom of the sea, there’s no oxygen, and it’s very cold.”

He gives a clipped little laugh. “Of course,” he adds, “we don’t know much about microbiology at those depths. Possibly anaerobic organisms there can biodegrade it. It’s not inconceivable. But no one’s taken a submersible down to check. Based on our observations, it’s unlikely. So we expect much-slower degradation at the sea bottom. Many times longer. Even an order of magnitude longer.”

An order of magnitude-that’s ten times-longer than what? One thousand years? Ten thousand?

No one knows, because no plastic has died a natural death yet. It took today’s microbes that break hydrocarbons down to their building blocks a long time after plants appeared to learn to eat lignin and cellulose. More recently, they’ve even learned to eat oil. None can digest plastic yet, because fifty years is too short a time for evolution to develop the necessary biochemistry.

Al Gore is in the news again with the release of his new book, "The Assault On Reason". Time has a look at "The Last Temptation of Al Gore". Its a shame that Al isn't running for president as I'd love to see the Rodent have to go to Washington on his knees from now on (though the other problem with that fantasy is that Johnny's heading for an ignominious retirement later this year, but Bush won't join him and Tony Blair until a year later).

Let's say you were dreaming up the perfect stealth candidate for 2008, a Democrat who could step into the presidential race when the party confronts its inevitable doubts about the front runners. You would want a candidate with the grass-roots appeal of Barack Obama—someone with a message that transcends politics, someone who spoke out loud and clear and early against the war in Iraq. But you would also want a candidate with the operational toughness of Hillary Clinton—someone with experience and credibility on the world stage.

In other words, you would want someone like Al Gore—the improbably charismatic, Academy Award–winning, Nobel Prize–nominated environmental prophet with an army of followers and huge reserves of political and cultural capital at his command. There's only one problem. The former Vice President just doesn't seem interested. He says he has "fallen out of love with politics," which is shorthand for both his general disgust with the process and the pain he still feels over the hard blow of the 2000 election, when he became only the fourth man in U.S. history to win the popular vote but lose a presidential election. In the face of wrenching disappointment, he showed enormous discipline—waking up every day knowing he came so close, believing the Supreme Court was dead wrong to shut down the Florida recount but never talking about it publicly because he didn't want Americans to lose faith in their system. That changes a man forever.

It changed Gore for the better. He dedicated himself to a larger cause, doing everything in his power to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, and that decision helped transform the way Americans think about global warming and carried Gore to a new state of grace. So now the question becomes, How will he choose to spend all the capital he has accumulated? No wonder friends, party elders, moneymen and green leaders are still trying to talk him into running. "We have dug ourselves into a 20-ft. hole, and we need somebody who knows how to build a ladder. Al's the guy," says Steve Jobs of Apple. "Like many others, I have tried my best to convince him. So far, no luck." ...

For now, at least, Gore is firmly in the program. He's working mightily to build a popular movement to confront what he calls "the most serious crisis we've ever faced." He has logged countless miles in the past four years, crisscrossing the planet to present his remarkably powerful slide show and the Oscar-winning documentary that's based on it, An Inconvenient Truth, to groups of every size and description. He flies commercial most of the time to use less CO2 and buys offsets to maintain a carbon-neutral life. In tandem with Hurricane Katrina and a rising chorus of warning from climate scientists, Gore's film helped trigger one of the most dramatic opinion shifts in history as Americans suddenly realized they must change the way they live. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, an overwhelming majority of those surveyed—90% of Democrats, 80% of independents, 60% of Republicans—said they favor "immediate action" to confront the crisis. ...

Time also has an excerpt from the book.

Not long before our nation launched the invasion of Iraq, our longest-serving Senator, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, stood on the Senate floor and said: "This chamber is, for the most part, silent—ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing. We stand passively mute in the United States Senate."

Why was the Senate silent?

In describing the empty chamber the way he did, Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.

A large and growing number of Americans are asking out loud: "What has happened to our country?" People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fix it.

To take another example, for the first time in American history, the Executive Branch of our government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by General George Washington during the Revolutionary War.

It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

American democracy is now in danger—not from any one set of ideas, but from unprecedented changes in the environment within which ideas either live and spread, or wither and die. I do not mean the physical environment; I mean what is called the public sphere, or the marketplace of ideas.

It is simply no longer possible to ignore the strangeness of our public discourse. I know I am not alone in feeling that something has gone fundamentally wrong. In 2001, I had hoped it was an aberration when polls showed that three-quarters of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for attacking us on Sept. 11. More than five years later, however, nearly half of the American public still believes Saddam was connected to the attack.

At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess—an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole.

While American television watchers were collectively devoting 100 million hours of their lives each week to these and other similar stories, our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness. For example, hardly anyone now disagrees that the choice to invade Iraq was a grievous mistake. Yet, incredibly, all of the evidence and arguments necessary to have made the right decision were available at the time and in hindsight are glaringly obvious. ...

The potential for manipulating mass opinions and feelings initially discovered by commercial advertisers is now being even more aggressively exploited by a new generation of media Machiavellis. The combination of ever more sophisticated public opinion sampling techniques and the increasing use of powerful computers to parse and subdivide the American people according to "psychographic" categories that identify their susceptibility to individually tailored appeals has further magnified the power of propagandistic electronic messaging that has created a harsh new reality for the functioning of our democracy.

As a result, our democracy is in danger of being hollowed out. In order to reclaim our birthright, we Americans must resolve to repair the systemic decay of the public forum. We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future. We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth. Americans in both parties should insist on the re-establishment of respect for the rule of reason.

And what if an individual citizen or group of citizens wants to enter the public debate by expressing their views on television? Since they cannot simply join the conversation, some of them have resorted to raising money in order to buy 30 seconds in which to express their opinion. But too often they are not allowed to do even that. MoveOn.org tried to buy an ad for the 2004 Super Bowl broadcast to express opposition to Bush's economic policy, which was then being debated by Congress. CBS told MoveOn that "issue advocacy" was not permissible. Then, CBS, having refused the MoveOn ad, began running advertisements by the White House in favor of the president's controversial proposal. So MoveOn complained, and the White House ad was temporarily removed. By temporarily, I mean it was removed until the White House complained, and CBS immediately put the ad back on, yet still refused to present the MoveOn ad. ...

Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets—through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

The danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators—principally large telephone and cable companies—have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways.

The democratization of knowledge by the print medium brought the Enlightenment. Now, broadband interconnection is supporting decentralized processes that reinvigorate democracy. We can see it happening before our eyes: As a society, we are getting smarter. Networked democracy is taking hold. You can feel it. We the people—as Lincoln put it, "even we here"—are collectively still the key to the survival of America's democracy.

Editor and Publisher reports 1 in 4 Americans are satisfied with the state of the nation.

What's going on? Gallup reports today a sudden plunge in its regular "satisfaction" index. Only 25% of Americans now say they satisfied with the state of their country -- down 8% in just one month -- and one of the lowest ever measured.

"The current 25% satisfaction level is very low by historical standards," Gallup explained. "Since Gallup first asked this question in 1979, the average percentage of Americans saying they are satisfied with conditions in the country is 43%."

Iraq continues to weigh the most on minds. "Even though skyrocketing gas prices may contribute to the public's sour mood this month," the organization revealed, "the issue is not mentioned by an especially high percentage of Americans as the nation's top problem."

I might as well take a look at some other US presidential candidates while I'm at it, starting with Grist's pick for best for the environment - Bill Richardson.

As of today, Bill Richardson has become the boldest, most visionary Democratic presidential candidate on climate and energy policy. (John Edwards is a close second.) No politician from either party has put forward a plan that comes closer to being a realistic response to the energy shortages and climate chaos heading our way.

Here's the heart of Richardson's speech today:

We need a man-on-the-moon program to end this addiction, this hemorrhage. But we need it much faster and much more boldly than people are suggesting.

When John F. Kennedy challenged this country to reach the moon, he challenged us to get there in TEN years, not twenty, or thirty, or forty.

On energy policy, we need to change fast, or sink slowly

I am issuing a call to action, for Congress, the energy industry, and the public. I am calling for a new American revolution -- an energy and climate revolution.

He's not kidding about much faster and much bolder, either. Here are the major planks of the plan, with some commentary.

Cut oil demand: 50% by 2020

This is bigger and faster than anything put forward by any other political figure I'm aware of -- certainly vastly stronger than anything Bush has offered.

The key pieces are raising fuel-efficiency standards to 50mpg by 2020 (contrast to Bush's plan to hit 35mpg by 2020, or Edwards' to hit 40mpg by 2016), a new low-carbon standard for liquid fuels (30% carbon reduction by 2020), and substantial support for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles.

Change to Renewable Sources for Electricity: 50% by 2040

This is incredibly ballsy -- far and away the most ambitious target on the political table. (The closest comparison is Edwards' plan to make power companies generate 25% of their power with renewables by 2025.)

A national renewable portfolio standard (RPS) would mandate that 30% of the nation's energy come from renewables by 2020, and 50% by 2040. That's stronger than any of the 21 states that currently have an RPS in effect. It would require a truly radical series of reforms in the way we generate and use electricity.

Dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions: 80% by 2040

This is where the cap-and-trade system comes in, pushing emissions down 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2040 (ten years earlier than Edwards' plan -- the strongest competitor --would hit that target).

Lead by example and restore America as the world's leader

See if you can imagine Bush saying this:

We must return to the international negotiating table and support mandatory world-wide limits on global warming pollution. We will work closely with fast-growing nations and, as President, I will cooperate with the European Union, the World Bank, and other allies to help finance the small incremental cost of "doing it right." I will create a North American Energy Council with Mexico and Canada, which supply about 20% of our oil, and make sure our relations with these neighbors are firm and friendly. As we reduce our demand for foreign oil, we should work with the Gulf nations, and our partners at the UN, to create a multilateral system for protecting the Gulf so that within ten years the U.S. presence in the Gulf could be sharply and safely reduced.

This kind of forthright, unabashed multilateralism is practically anachronistic these days, but this is the issue that will -- if anything will -- restore America's position of leadership in the world.

The candidate with the most internet buzz (by a long way) is Ron Paul - Andrew Sullivan has a few words about Republican party machinations to rid themselves of their maverick truth telling candidate, who, Mr Sullivan notes, has more balls than the rest of them put together.

The conservative pundits are now referring to Ron Paul as a "crackpot." Hannity predictably savaged him last night (see above). The Hewitt site has an image of a man in a tin-foil hat; Dean Barnett and Hugh Hewitt both call for removing Paul from the debates, when he has been the best thing about them so far. Bill Benett wants him out. I'm getting the usual ridicule for taking him seriously from the usual GOP apparatchiks. They're scared, aren't they? The Internet polls show real support for him. Fox News' own internet poll placed him a close second, with 25 percent of the votes from Fox News viewers. We have a real phenomenon here - because someone has to stand up for what conservatism once stood for.

Whether you agree with him or not ( and I know few outside doctrinaire libertarians who agree with everything he says), he has already elevated the debates by injecting into them a legitimate, if now suppressed, strain of conservatism that is actually deeper in this country than the neoconservative aggression that now captures the party elite and has trapped the US in the Iraq nightmare.

Last night, Fox News tried to destroy him. Today the right-wing blogs will. My view is that the Beltway has this wrong again, as Byron York is finding out. Paul is saying things many Americans and many Republicans believe. On the war and spending, he is venting a vital part of conservative opinion - and, in my view, the conservative critique of this war and these Republicans is more damning than any liberal one.

I may not agree with him on everything and he is far from a smooth operator. But he has more balls than most of them put together. Check this video montage from the first debate and this exchange from the second. Make your own mind up. Hang in there, Dr Ron. There are more of us out here wishing you the best than you know.

Dave Winer is also wondering if Paul will be the hero of 2008 and mocking the odious Wolf Blitzer and Rudy Giuliani.

Of course the Republicans are trying to tar and feather Rep Ron Paul, spin what he says to make it sound like he's a nut.

Even the Democrats aren't making as much sense as he is.

A picture named maude.jpgThe things he's saying are surely what the politicos in Washington say when the cameras aren't on. We need more of that. Poor McCain, I can imagine at one point he might have said these things. But he's too sold out now to have any chance of winning if he did. His career would be over. But, you gotta wonder why he doesn't go ahead, because his career is totally over anyway, and the thought of more people dying, Americans and Iraqis, so he can hold on to a sliver of hope that he might win an election someday, suggests that he never really had any morals, he was just playing someone with them, in the hope of getting elected. Permalink to this paragraph

I'd like to shake Ron Paul's hand someday. I might even work for the guy, how about that! I honestly don't give a damn if the Republicans win or the Democrats -- I'd just like to see us, as a country, start using our brains, and start caring about not just ourselves but the poor schnooks who are dying. A little Golden Rule would help us feel okay about all the blessings we have. Permalink to this paragraph

As Maude used to say, and I think this every time I hear one of these guys like Blitzer or McCain (they're all the same) lie on TV -- God'll get you for that Walter. Well God won't only be getting Wolfe and John, he'll be getting you and me, if we stand around and don't do anything and let the bullshit continue. ...

It's amazing how Blitzer protects his viewers from the new information that there might be understandable reasons why the US was attacked on 9-11. (Of course the information itself is old, what's new is that it's being aired on CNN.)

We've been killing huge numbers of people in the Middle East for a long time. If a foreign power was doing to us what we do to them, we'd be pissed, and we'd fight back. (As they are.)

Paul is right, of course -- and Blitzer is wrong. Paul is the only candidate of either party with the guts to cut through the nonsense and say what's obviously true. And Blitzer is the one that owes us an apology, for carrying the lies for so long. He's supposed to be a journalist, and his job is to be neutral and to find and tell the truth.

Ron Paul is good medicine for the US political system.

PS: If Giuliani is so good at protecting us, why did the attacks happen on his watch? Why no warning from Giuliani? Didn't he see it coming? Couldn't he prevent it? Why should anyone think he'd do any better if he was President?

Lew Rockwell has an article on Ron Paul vs Rudy "The State Enforcer" Giuliani". Its amazing that only one Republican presidential candidate is willing to engage with reality at all instead of living in a world of lies, denial and spin.

Plenty of reasonable people can disagree about foreign policy. What's really strange is when one reasonable position is completely and forcibly excluded from the public debate.

Such was the case after 9-11. Every close observer of the events of those days knows full well that these crimes were acts of revenge for US policy in the Muslim world. The CIA and the 911 Commission said as much, the terrorists themselves proclaimed it, and Osama underscored the point by naming three issues in particular: US troops in Saudi Arabia, US sanctions against Iraq, and US funding of Israeli expansionism.

So far as I know, Ron Paul is the only prominent public figure in the six years since who has given an honest telling of this truth. The explosive exchange occurred during the Republican Presidential debate in South Carolina.

Ron was asked if he really wants the troops to come home, and whether that is really a Republican position.

"Well," he said, "I think the party has lost its way, because the conservative wing of the Republican Party always advocated a noninterventionist foreign policy. Senator Robert Taft didn't even want to be in NATO. George Bush won the election in the year 2000 campaigning on a humble foreign policy – no nation-building, no policing of the world. Republicans were elected to end the Korean War. The Republicans were elected to end the Vietnam War. There's a strong tradition of being anti-war in the Republican party. It is the constitutional position. It is the advice of the Founders to follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, stay out of entangling alliances, be friends with countries, negotiate and talk with them and trade with them."

He was then asked if 9-11 changed anything. He responded that US foreign policy was a "major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attacked us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East – I think Reagan was right. We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. "

And then out of the blue, he was asked whether we invited the attacks.

"I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, 'I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier.' They have already now since that time – have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary."

Then the very archetype of the State Enforcer popped up to shout him down.

"That's really an extraordinary statement," said Rudy Giuliani. "That's an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11th."

Now, this is interesting because it is obvious that Ron never said that we invited the attacks. This was a lie. He said the US foreign policy was a "contributing factor" in why they attacked us, a fact which only a fool or a liar could deny. Guiliani then went on to say that he has never "heard that before" – a statement that testifies to the extent of the blackout on this question.

Ron Paul was invited to respond, and concluded as follows:

"I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem. They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were – if other foreign countries were doing that to us?"

Wow, he broke the great taboo in American political life! Why this should be a taboo at all is unclear, but there it is. But now that it is finally out in the open, this shocking theory that the terrorists were not merely freedom-hating madmen but perhaps had some actual motive for their crime, let's think a bit more about it.

It is a normal part of human experience that if you occupy, meddle, bully, and coerce, people who are affected by it all are going to get angry. You don't have to be Muslim to get the point. The problem is that most of the American people simply have no idea what has been happening in the last ten years. Most Americans think that America the country is much like their own neighborhood: peaceful, happy, hard working, law abiding. So when you tell people that the US is actually something completely different, they are shocked.

Why would anyone hate us? The problem is that the military wing of the US government is very different from your neighborhood. After the Soviet Union crashed, US elites declared themselves masters of the universe, the only "indispensable nation" and the like. All countries must ask the US for permission to have a nuclear program. If we don't like your government, we can overthrow it. Meanwhile, we sought a global empire unlike any in history: not just a sphere of interest but the entire world. Laurence Vance has the details but here is the bottom line: one-third of a million deployed troops in 134 countries in 1000 locations in foreign countries.

All during the 1990s, the US attempted to starve the population of Iraq, with the result of hundreds of thousands of deaths. Madelyn Albright said on national television that the deaths of 500,000 children (the UN's number) was "worth it" in order to achieve our aims, which were ostensibly the elimination of non-existent, non-US built weapons of mass destruction. Yes, that annoyed a few people. There were constant bombings in Iraq all these years. And let us not forget how all this nonsense began: the first war in 1989 was waged in retaliation for a US-approved Iraqi invasion of its former province, Kuwait. Saddam had good reason to think that the US ambassador was telling the truth about non-interference with Kuwait relations: Saddam was our ally all through the Iran-Iraq war and before.

Ron spoke about complications of the Middle East. One of them is that the enemy we are now fighting, the Islamic extremists, are the very group that we supported and subsidized all through the 1980s in the name of fighting Communism. That's the reason the US knows so much about their bunkers and hiding spots in Afghanistan: US taxdollars created them.

Now, I know this is a lot for the tender ears of Americans to take, who like to think that their government reflects their own values of faith, freedom, and friendliness. But here is the point that libertarians have been trying to hammer home for many years: the US government is the enemy of the American people and their values. It is not peaceful, it is not friendly, it is not motivated by the Christian faith but rather power and imperial lust.

Ron is such a wonderful person that I'm sorry that he had to be the one to tell the truth. One could sense in the debate that he was making an enormous sacrifice here. After Guiliani spoke, the red-state fascists in the audience all started whooping up the bloodlust that the politicians have been encouraging for the last six years – a mindless display of Nazi-like nationalism that would cause the founding fathers to shudder with fear of what we've become. These people are frantic about terrorism and extremism abroad, but they need to take a good hard look in the mirror.

Joining Giuliani as one of the more fascist leaning Republican candidates is Mitt Romney who clearly doesn't understand what a stain on America's reputation Guantanamo Bay has been - and even worse, he wants to make the place twice as bad.

As Crooks and Liars noted, former governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) said tonight that instead of shutting the prison at Guantanamo Bay, “we ought to double Guantanamo,” in part so that detainees “don’t get access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil.”

ROMNEY: I am glad [detainees] are at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo.

Since its creation over five years ago, the prison at Guantanamo Bay has been a source of human rights abuses that have dangerously tarnished the reputation of the United States. Leaders across the world have called for its closure, including U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and even President Bush’s ally, outgoing-British Prime Minister Tony Blair. President Bush even said, “I’d like to close Guantanamo.”

The facility faces widespread criticism at home as well. A poll last year showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the United States “should change the way it treats detainees” to comply with international standards.

The nearest thing the Democrats have to Ron Paul is Mike Gravel who is running a strong anti-war platform and saying whatever he feels like.

Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel, D-Alaska, is running, at age 76 and after years out of the public arena, the longest of long-shot candidacies for the presidency.

With his colorful confrontations of other Democratic candidates during a recent debate in South Carolina, Gravel has generated some buzz in the liberal blogosphere — and he even earned some time with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

Gravel conducted a one-on-one, 45 minute conversation with Iowa Independent fellow Douglas Burns.

Iowa Independent: When I watched the debate the other night, and don’t take this the wrong way, but you seem awfully angry for a 76-year-old. Why are you so angry?

Sen. Gravel: "I'm angry because every day you and I are talking about this thing people are dying. How would you feel if you were over there (Iraq) getting shot at, getting crippled, because your leaders didn't exercise proper judgment. What about the people who are going die between now and Christmas because we don't end the war? That's a reason to get angry. That's blood. That's people dying and we sit here complacently and say, 'That's far away." ...

Moving away from political candidates to a malign force behind US politics, Jerry Falwell has passed away. Jason at Anthropik has a tribute.

De mortuis nihil nisi bene, Cheilon of Sparta said (or at least, Horatius quoted him): "Nothing but good about the dead." So, I won't say anything. Instead, I'll simply leave it to the words of the late reverend:

And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, "You helped this happen."

— Rev. Jerry Falwell, blaming civil libertarians, feminists, homosexuals, and abortion rights supporters for the terrorist attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, quoted from John F Harris, "God Gave US 'What We Deserve,' Falwell Says," The Washington Post (September 14, 2001)

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.

— Rev. Jerry Falwell (attributed: source unknown)

The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

— Rev Jerry Falwell, Sermon, July 4, 1976

This is probably as bad a day as the court has had on social issues since "Roe v Wade."

— Rev Jerry Falwell, reacting to the Supreme Court's ruling in the Texas sodomy case, "Lawrence v. Texas," wherein the high court upheld an individual's (or a couple's) right to privacy; "It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter," said Justice Anthony M Kennedy, for the majority in an opinion "as broad in its constitutional vision as any ever issued by the court," wrote Charles Lane for The Washington Post; in his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia, an extremist Evangelical Christian, complained that the justices voting to uphold the right to privacy were creating a new constitutional right, that they were not upholding the Constitution, quoted from "Planned Parenthood Federal Action Report" (July, 2003)

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

— Rev Jerry Falwell, America Can Be Saved, 1979 pp. 52-53, from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom

I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I read enough by both Muslims and non-Muslims, [to decide] that he was a violent man, a man of war.

— Rev Jerry Falwell, in an interview given on September 30, 2002, for the October 6 edition of 60 Minutes

Jimmy Carter's "message of peace and reconciliation under almost all circumstances is simply incompatible with Christian teachings as I interpret them. This 'turn the other cheek' business is all well and good but it's not what Jesus fought and died for. What we need to do is take the battle to the Muslim heathens and do unto them before they do unto us."

— Rev Jerry Falwell, in a radio interview on March 4, 2002, Falwell said of former President Jimmy Carter

I think he's a phony, period, as far as representing the black people of South Africa.

— Rev Jerry Falwell, regarding Archbishop Desmond Tutu, while supporting Apartheid South Africa

I do question the sincerity and non-violent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations.

— Rev Jerry Falwell

There are almost as many alcoholics as there are negroes.

— Rev Jerry Falwell

I know a few of you here today don't like Jews. And I know why. He can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose.

— Rev Jerry Falwell

I listen to feminists and all these radical gals—most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men—that's their problem.

— Rev Jerry Falwell

Crooks and Liars have another Falwell tribute - this one from Christopher Hitchens (who is also disgracefully defending ex World Bank head Paul "Iraq floats on a sea of oil" Wolfowitz - wondering why everyone is out to get him. Maybe thats what happen when you are a prime mover behind the deaths of 750,000 people Chris).

Oh my. Tell us how you really feel, Chris. Whenever you get Hannity to call you a "jackass" on air, you know you must be doing something right. Hitch's assault on Ralph "Tinkerbell" Reed for his ties to Abramoff alone make this an instant classic.

It's astounding to hear Sean Hannity — the King of demonizing people for single instances of perceived transgressions (for which they apologize profusely — see: Sen. Byrd, Dick Durbin, John Kerry etc.) — dismiss away Falwell's long record of hateful comments. Apparently it's not OK to blame American foreign policy for terrorism, but it's OK to blame the ACLU and gays.

If you think you can stomach it, check out how the Coultergeist remembers Falwell. Are there no depths to which this wretched and poor excuse for a human being is willing to sink? I think that question was answered long ago.

And to close, some retro tinfoil from Cryptogon about the Kennedy Assassination.

Excuse me for not having more optimism about this… But I find it interesting and ominous that this story is breaking within days of E. Howard Hunt’s death bed confession that, YES, They did it.

Where was that story in the mainstream press?

Why doesn’t this bullet fragment story mention Hunt’s recent confession?

Never mind the Oklahoma City bombing and TWA Flight 800 coverups that the lead investigator/propagandist was associated with.

Maybe They can get the crackpot jet fuel World Trade Center collapse / 47 steel core column disappearance / magic passport theorists in on the JFK bullet fragment study!

Wouldn’t that be special?

Via: MSNBC:

In a collision of 21st-century science and decades-old conspiracy theories, a research team that includes a former top FBI scientist is challenging the bullet analysis used by the government to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The “evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed,” concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James.

The researchers’ re-analysis involved new statistical calculations and a modern chemical analysis of bullets from the same batch Oswald is purported to have used. They reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved, but urged that authorities conduct a new and complete forensic re-analysis of the five bullet fragments left from the assassination 44 years ago.

“Given the significance and impact of the JFK assassination, it is scientifically desirable for the evidentiary fragments to be re-analyzed,” the researchers said.

Tobin was the FBI lab’s chief metallurgy expert for more than two decades. He analyzed metal evidence in major cases that included the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 1996 explosion of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island.