Just Passing By  

This is just a brief emergence from my blogging break - just a few snippets of note that seemed topical for this week.

The recently released report on carbon trading in Australia looks like just another one of the Rodents delaying tactics - trying to appear to be doing something while steadfastly defending the indefensible status quo - the perfect task for a myopic midget.

The Greens and the South Australian government have slammed a prime ministerial taskforce's interim report on a carbon emissions trading system as a time-waster. The taskforce's issues paper, released today, rejected a carbon tax on industry as an effective method of lowering emissions, but did not contain any specific recommendations. Instead it posed a series of questions for further consideration by the committee before its final report, which is not due until May.

South Australian Premier Mike Rann says the report raises more questions than answers. "After months and months of inaction, the prime minister today came out with a nine-page report that again talks about Australia following rather than leading," Mr Rann said. "The nine-page paper poses more questions than answers and does little to progress action on the urgent issue of climate change."

Mr Rann said Australia needed a national carbon emissions trading scheme. "The issues paper does not set out any clear position or views at this stage, neither does it go into any detail about what a global emissions trading scheme might look like," he said.

Greens climate change spokeswoman, Christine Milne, said the report merely further delayed action on combating emissions and backed the government's stance in protecting the polluting coal industry. "Industry is saying 'we need to make investment decisions, we need a price signal, we need certainty about an emissions trading scheme'," Senator Milne told reporters. "The states have done a huge amount of work. Let's get on and implement (a trading scheme). The prime minister should just take over the state-based scheme and start implementing it based on the work that's already done, not ask a series of vacuous questions designed to enlist the same responses that people have already given three times."

The Age has a pair of reports on the Australian Senate report on our future oil supply. From yesterday's preview:

A Senate report into Australia's future oil supply will be released on Tuesday.

It comes as peak oil theory experts and environmentalists prepare to link growing concern about global warming to the over use of oil. Peak oil theory predicts crude oil reserves will run out, with some warnings suggesting that little more than 50 years supply is left.

A UN linked panel of scientists declared last week that human activity was almost certainly the major cause of global warming which threatens to melt ice caps and raise sea levels dramatically. The interim report of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee linked oil use to global warming.

Committee chair Australian Greens senator Rachel Siewert says the link between the two issues of oil vulnerability and climate change must be accepted by the federal government. "The government needs to be taking issues around oil vulnerability extremely seriously," she said.

The Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, a body of environmentalists and oil experts, highlighted in its submission to the Senate inquiry the need to reduce car use to help avoid the possibility of oil running out. "Scientists who warned us for ages about climate change were ignored and derided," association spokesman Bruce Robinson said. "Now, droughts, hotter temperatures and melting glaciers are showing the warnings should have been heeded earlier and action taken."

And from today's report:

GOVERNMENT senators will join their colleagues from the Greens and the ALP today in calling for urgent action to reduce Australia's dependence on oil.

The Age believes that a 14-month inquiry into Australia's future oil supply has produced a unanimous Senate report calling on the Federal Government to develop a comprehensive strategy mapping out oil alternatives that could reduce our reliance on fluctuating crude oil prices. The report's authors are expected to accept evidence that there are risks to Australia's economy and to the environment if the country continues to import and consume oil at current levels.

It is believed the report calls on Canberra to do more to develop oil alternatives, including examining the current levels of research funding for oil alternatives such as lignocellulose ethanol, a type of ethanol that does not create more energy during its production than is saved by using it as a transport fuel.

The report is expected to criticise Government enthusiasm for energy policies such as encouraging the conversion of coal to liquids as an alternative to oil. It suggests this might be economically viable but will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by cars, trucks and other vehicles.

The report, by the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport, chaired by Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, is scheduled for tabling today. The senate committee took 194 submissions and held hearings around the country before finalising its report.

ASPO Australia has an op-ed from Bruce Robinson on Preparing for the Petrol Droughts (doc).

Scientists who warned us for ages about climate change were ignored and derided. Now, droughts, hotter temperatures and melting glaciers are showing the warnings should have been heeded earlier and action taken. Other scientists have warned us about Peak Oil for years and they have been similarly dismissed, probably just as unwisely. Peak Oil is when the rate of global oil production changes from its current increasing trend to the unavoidable downtrend as the world’s oil fields start their overall decline phase. We will not run out of oil, but there will be less available each year in future than there has been in the past.

WorldChanging has an interview with WorldWatch's Lester Brown which touches on peak oil and global warming.

Mark Tovey: So one of the things that I'm wondering is how big a problem is it that so much of our infrastructure that runs on oil right now (combines for farms, trucks to ship things, individual automobiles, industrial machinery to actually make things), was designed with petroleum in mind, and doesn't necessarily run on biofuels, or at least not out of the gate. Do you know of technologies that allow those kinds of things to be retrofitted without scrapping that infrastructure and rebuilding it fom scratch, or if we did have to scrap portions of it are there ways of doing that that we can re-use a substantial amount of that?

Lester Brown: A large share of the world's oil is used for transportation and we know that a good part of that can be substituted -- we can substitute, as I mentioned using plug-in hybrids with, we can substitute wind for example, any source of electricity, but wind, because it's clean, or -- for automotive fuel, for gasoline, or for diesel. So that takes care of a large part of our use of oil. But there's still a lot more. And the more difficult ones to substitute are construction machinery -- heavy duty construction machinery -- some farm implements, jet aircraft. They're more difficult. But what we can begin to do with, I mean jet aircraft can run on ethanol as well as jet fuel. So that's entirely do-able. The trick is to develop sources of liquid fuel that are not environmentally disruptive -- and are not socially competitive with, for -- the food supply. And that means developing cellulosic ethanol as a form of liquid fuel that can be used in the place of gasoline and biodiesel.

But that's a smaller, a relatively small part of the total -- it's automobiles -- but we can look at urban transport systems that are almost entirely electricity driven with light rail, begin to substitute light rail more and more for buses for example, and, so, much of our passenger transport is fairly easy. Some farm implements, I mean, farm implements can also operate on ethanol, tractors and combines and those sort of things. So we will need something other than electricity for a piece of the automotive fuel and transport fuel use, but we can begin to see how to get most of that energy from renewable sources, importantly wind. ...

LB: I think Americans are more concerned about the future than any time that I can remember.

Two of the things they're concerned about: One is oil. They realize, in the Middle East, it's a mess right now, and to count on oil from there is really a high risk proposition. And also, that our reserves are being depleted. That's pretty clear. I mean, peak oil may be imminent. A world very different, when oil production is declining. Very different from any we've known. We've spent our lifetimes in an environment where global production was rising: there are temporary interruptions, but basically ... not.

I think concerns with oil are one thing, and concerns about climate change are another thing. And fortunately, they both have the same solution, or solutions. What reduces our dependence on oil also helps to reduce carbon emissions. ...

LB: ... the real question is whether we cross the tipping point in social behaviour, attitudes, first, or whether we cross some of the climate change thresholds first. It's two tipping points, one social, and one environmental.

My model is one based on rising levels of information. ... these changes do occur. Sometimes as with cigarette smoking it's a gradual rising level of awareness. In the case of Pearl Harbour it was a very dramatic event that just changed everything. And, so, I am inclined to think it's going to be information.

And interestingly, and the reason I'm always happy to do interviews, is because in the United States beginning of World War II, it was the automobile industry that really held the key to our restructuring quickly.

Today I think the equivalent are the communications media. Because we're faced with an enormous educational challenge. I don't think the formal educational system has the capacity, because of the built-in time lags. I think [that the media is] the only institution that can respond to the educational challenge we face, so that people everywhere are as aware of what's happening -- or almost -- as the people that are in this conference today. And that's going to take an enormous effort. Now, it's encouraging because the media's beginning to give much more coverage to Climate Change, for example.

MT: What might that look like?

LB: It would mean more news coverage, more news analysis of these issues, not just reporting there's flooding someplace, or drought, or an enormously destructive storm, but not reporting it as just weather events, but as quite possibly part of a change in the Earth's climate. And then people, are -- it sort of forces people to think into the future. And say, you know, if it's Katrina today, what might it be tomorrow? And documentaries of course -- analysing these things. And reality shows, that deal with these issues.

Technology Review notes there are "Many, Many Smoking Guns" in the latest IPCC report on global warming.

When the UN-organized Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) presents its projections for global warming and future climate changes tomorrow, the report's hallmark will be a far greater level of certainty and precision than what was expressed in the last IPCC report, issued in 2001. "The certainty is huge," says Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada's top climate modeling expert and a coauthor of the new IPCC report.

To be sure, continued warming observed since 2001 is part of that certainty. But climatologists say the bigger factor is the broad accumulation of science over the past six years that has increased the precision with which climate models predict future climate change, debunked alternative hypotheses advanced by skeptics, and identified the footprint of man-made climate change in every corner of the earth.

As Weaver put it, the IPCC has not just found a smoking gun linking greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Rather, its fourth report delivers a smoking arsenal. "There are many, many smoking guns," he says. "It's a battalion of smoking intercontinental ballistic missiles."

Jerry Mahlman, a senior research associate at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder, CO, and a peer reviewer for the IPCC, says that while the final language is still being hammered out, the report might end up expressing 99 percent certainty that greenhouse gas emissions, primarily from burning fossil fuels, are warming Earth, up from "greater than 90 percent" confidence in the previous report. "It's very obvious that the earth is warming up exactly as we've projected it to do so," says Mahlman. One recent draft notes that IPCC's projection in 1990 that global average temperature would rise by between 0.15 and 0.3 °C per decade through 2005 compares well with the 0.2 °C increase that actually occurred.

Today, many detailed scientific reports are detecting global warming's fingerprints rather than simply glimpsing the outline of its footprint. The second and third IPCC assessments, issued in 1996 and 2001, respectively, built a case for man-made climate change on increased global average temperature above that expected from natural variability. Weaver says the fourth report, in contrast, will identify the signal of man-made climate change in every region of the globe and in many more variables beyond temperature, such as increases in intense tropical cyclones and forest fires.

The Rodent can't quite decide if he believes that global warming is occurring or not - some truths are just too inconvenient for some people.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Yesterday's parliamentary blunder on climate change has Opposition MPs insisting that John Howard was caught out saying what he really thinks. In Parliament yesterday, the Prime Minister said the jury was still out on the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, but he later corrected that, saying that he was referring to a connection between greenhouse gas emissions and drought.

Mr Howard insists he's a climate change realist and he says he simply misheard Labor's question, but the Opposition is convinced that Mr Howard remains a doubter. ...

But first, Alexandra Kirk in Canberra reports the Prime Minister is still having to deal with growing public concern and continuing dissent in his own ranks over the treatment of David Hicks.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: The competition is hotting up on who has the best climate change policy going into this year's election. The Federal Government insists the response must be a global one. But it's now realising that may be some time off and that voters are looking to the Commonwealth for concrete measures. The Government's insisting when it comes to a carbon trading scheme, the bottom line is to not affect Australia's competitiveness or to endanger jobs, but it's keeping an open mind on a domestic scheme. ... Labor's been hounding the Government on climate change and insists the Prime Minister's stumble yesterday revealed his true position.

KEVIN RUDD: Does the Prime Minister recall his industry minister saying just six months ago: "I am a sceptic of the connection between emissions and climate change"?
Does the Prime Minister support this statement?

JOHN HOWARD: Well Mr Speaker, it's not only remarks made by people in this Parliament, there's a farmer I know who's sceptical about that connection too as well, as well, Mr Speaker. But look, you can debate and let me say to the Leader of the Opposition that the jury is still out on the degree of connection, and the jury is still out on the degree of connection.

(heckling from floor)

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Labor frontbencher, Wayne Swan, says on climate change, Mr Howard's being driven by opinion polls.

WAYNE SWAN: The truth is that this Prime Minister, when it comes to climate change, simply doesn't get it. A leopard doesn't change its spots.

You see, the Prime Minister for the last few years has simply been in denial. He's had his head in the sand when it comes to climate change. We're now expected to believe that in the space of a couple of months he's had a conversion. There's no conversion here. He's still in denial about climate change.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Another Labor frontbencher, Tony Burke, calls Mr Howard's mistake astonishing.

TONY BURKE: I mean John Howard's a very clever politician, but two years ago you never saw him making mistakes like that.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: And Democrats leader Lyn Allison insists Mr Howard's blunder reveals he's still a climate change sceptic.

LYN ALLISON: He should've realised immediately that he'd made a mistake, if indeed that's what happened. My guess is that his advisers told him that this was untenable and that he should take back his response and explain that this was not what he meant. I think it's genuinely what the Prime Minister thinks and that's the biggest worry of all.

ALEXANDRA KIRK: Along with global warming, the Government is having to deal with growing public dissatisfaction about the treatment of David Hicks. While charges have been prepared, they haven't been laid and still no timetable on his trial. Concerned Coalition MPs aren't letting up.

JUDITH TROETH: I am concerned that he has not, that he has been in jail in close confinement for now five years and has not had a trial and along with many other MPs I am very anxious for his trial to proceed in the US as soon as possible.

REPORTER: Did the PM say he could bring him home whenever he liked?

(sound of footsteps, no answer)

There is a troubling report in The Age that Hicks is getting some Abu Ghraib style treatment from his captors.

A junior US officer reported witnessing Taliban prisoners of war being sexually abused in Afghanistan weeks after Australian terrorist suspect David Hicks says he was anally penetrated by his American captors.

Documents obtained by AAP show the officer reported a Taliban prisoner was abused on February 11, 2002. "I noticed that one of the MPs (military police) was lubricating two of his fingers preparing to perform the anal probe instead of the medical person," says the officer's sworn statement, made in Kandahar, Afghanistan. "Without warning the EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War), and in a cruel way, he push both his fingers into the EPWs anus. This caused the EPW to scream and fall to the ground violently."

Hicks has been held for five years without trial in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay after being seized by Northern Alliance fighters in Afghanistan in December 2001. He was handed over to US officials and later flown to the prison camp in Cuba, where he now faces new charges of attempted murder and providing material support for terrorism.

Hicks's supporters claim he was abused by US soldiers after his capture and before being sent to Guantanamo Bay. The first suggestion that Hicks was abused aired in 2004, around the time of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, which severely damaged US credibility in Iraq. Hicks's father Terry Hicks said last year the Australian "suffered beatings and anal penetration".

Of course, an anal probe seems par for the course now for visitors to the mainland US as well as those sent to offshore detention camps. And life doesn't seem much easier if you're trying to get out again later either.

US immigration officials insisted the sufferer of an anal infection remove a small piece of medical thread which was being used by doctors to treat the condition. The man required treatment under general anaesthetic as a result. The man had an anal fistula, which is a painful channel that can develop deep into the anus, caused by infection or digestive conditions such as Crohn's disease. More details, if absolutely necessary, from NHS Direct here.

Arriving on holiday in New York in August last year, the unnamed 48-year-old was interrogated and searched by immigration officers, according to a letter appearing in medical journal The Lancet. The rectal examination discovered a device called a seton, which doctors in the UK had inserted into the fistula to help control long-term infection.

The seton was made of a blue braided medical suture material knotted and passed into the hole where the fistula surfaced. After one baffled immigration officer pulled "very hard" on the seton, the patient was given the choice by the baffled immigration officers of either getting on the next plane home, or submitting himself to a procedure to have it removed.

Happily, as The Lancet's correspondent notes, the curious immigration officer yanking the seton did not damage "the anal sphincter muscles encircled by it". The seton was duly removed by an airport doctor, who claimed to have no idea what it was. The man now requires treatment under general anaesthetic to have a replacement inserted.

The letter writer concludes by advising seton patients to carry a letter from their doctor when travelling "to the USA or any other country where they are likely to be searched in this manner". Read the wince-inducing letter here...

The NSW state election is approaching with the various groups trying to burnish their green credentials. Labor looks like winning easily in spite of not being all that solid on global warming - but at least they are better than the Liberals, who have a triplet of albatrosses hanging around their necks in the form of Howard's stonewalling action on global warming, the Iraq war (not that the state Libs can influence our presence but they aren't making a stand against it either) and the far right fundamentalist faction that has increasingly dominated the party over the years. If you're not into the Green party (who are making the right stand on both of my pet issues) for one reason or another, an alternative is the new Climate Change Coalition which seems to be generating plenty of support and now has a large stable of candidates in the running. They also do a good daily media summary from local outlets on climate change related issues.

Media Summary 07/02/07

Australian Financial Review

* PM feels heat in climate change debate – P1
* Doubts over global emissions trading – P5
* Turnbull’s energetic theatrics evoke ghost of Ming – P5
* Sydney desalination plant out to tender – P8
* State hold out for users’ rights – P8

The Australian

* Carbon scheme possible – P1
* Nats pour water on Murray strategy – P4
* Bracks, Beattie not going with the flow – P4
* Go-ahead for desal plant – P4
* Carbon-trading on the table – P4

The Sydney Morning Herald

* Water wars: it’s the sea or underground – P1
* Don’t blame global warming it’s Rudd’s fault – P4
* Howard’s own climate change may prove his biggest election - year obstacle– P5

The Daily Telegraph

* I hear you Australia – PM – Hicks and climate change – P1
* Howard’s blunder as Rudd turns up the heat – P8
* Jobs lost by staying with coal – P13

The Herald – Newcastle

* Desalination plant ready by 09 – P4
* Licenses dry up for underground scheme – P 4
* Well timed coal ban – P8
* Native regrowth best way to capture carbon – P9

I got a flyer in the mail today about a free screening of "An Inconvenient Truth" put on by the local council this Saturday.

Date: Saturday 10 February 2007
Time: 7:00 PM - 10:30 PM
Venue: Naremburn Park - Free - Outdoor

Free screening of the film An Inconvenient Truth. The night kicks off at 7pm, with the film being screen at 8.30pm.

* Green power event
* Guest speaker – announced in January 07
* Environmental information stalls
* Food stalls
* Family entertainment

The movie will be subtitled for the hearing impaired. The event is run on 100% GreenPower. You don't need a ticket but - to show your support and give us an idea of how many people will attend - please book by calling 9777 1028.

Walk, ride or use public transport. Phone 131 500 or visit www.131500.com.au for information on public transport or pick up a Walking and Riding map from Willoughby City Council.

On the Federal election front, grassroots organisation GetUp (which seems to be loosely based on MoveOn in the US) is aiming for 200,000 members - which would dwarf any political party membership here. Australian readers go an join here.

Our farmers are crippled by drought. Bush fires are breaking out earlier every year. We're facing record-breaking heat waves, increasing water scarcity and intensifying cyclones and storms. Each of us with hopes for our future, or with children and grandchildren who will be left with our mess, must act now.

Join our movement for real action on climate change and over the coming months GetUp will unveil a series of exciting actions designed to hold politicians accountable and turn the pressure up on Government to act. Click HERE to learn the five steps experts agree we must take to tackle this problem, and JOIN THE CONVERSATION on what actions we want our politicians committing to for this term in Parliament.

Australia emits the most planet-changing carbon dioxide per capita of any industrialised country in the world, but our Federal Government has its head too far down a coalmine to sign the Kyoto Protocol, price carbon appropriately or encourage genuine large-scale investment in renewable energy. Politicians at all levels of government need to see the writing on the wall, and realise this is not an issue for somebody else to solve - it's the issue in their backyard.

To help build the issue in your local area, attend a CLIMATE CHANGE, DESPAIR AND EMPOWERMENT ROADSHOW seminar - with a screening of An Inconvenient Truth and discussion about what you can do in your community. These are being organised by The Rainforest Information Centre, and touring around Northern NSW, the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, Sydney and surrounds.

Technology Review has an article on the surge (or should that be escalation) of interest in algae to biofuel technology.

Relatively high oil prices, advances in technology, and the Bush administration's increased emphasis on renewable fuels are attracting new interest in a potentially rich source of biofuels: algae. A number of startups are now demonstrating new technology and launching large research efforts aimed at replacing hundreds of millions of gallons of fossil fuels by 2010, and much more in the future.

Algae makes oil naturally. Raw algae can be processed to make biocrude, the renewable equivalent of petroleum, and refined to make gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and chemical feedstocks for plastics and drugs. Indeed, it can be processed at existing oil refineries to make just about anything that can be made from crude oil. This is the approach being taken by startups Solix Biofuels, based in Fort Collins, CO, and LiveFuels, based in Menlo Park, CA.

Alternatively, strains of algae that produce more carbohydrates and less oil can be processed and fermented to make ethanol, with leftover proteins used for animal feed. This is one of the potential uses of algae produced by startup GreenFuel Technologies Corporation, based in Cambridge, MA.

The theoretical potential is clear. Algae can be grown in open ponds or sealed in clear tubes, and it can produce far more oil per acre than soybeans, a source of oil for biodiesel. Algae can also clean up waste by processing nitrogen from wastewater and carbon dioxide from power plants. What's more, it can be grown on marginal lands useless for ordinary crops, and it can use water from salt aquifers that is not useful for drinking or agriculture. "Algae have the potential to produce a huge amount of oil," says Kathe Andrews-Cramer, the technical lead researcher for biofuels and bioenergy programs at Sandia National Laboratories, in Albuquerque, NM. "We could replace certainly all of our diesel fuel with algal-derived oils, and possibly replace a lot more than that."

To be sure, the use of algae for liquid fuels has been studied extensively in the past, including through a program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that ran for nearly a decade. At the time, the results were not encouraging. The NREL program was terminated in 1996, largely because at the time crude-oil prices were far too low for algae to compete.

But Eric Jarvis, an NREL scientist, says that enough has changed that NREL researchers expect to restart the program within the next six months to a year. When the program was cancelled in 1996, oil prices were relatively low. Today's higher oil prices will make it easier for algae to compete. Still, Jarvis cautions that "you have to be careful because there's a lot of hype out there right now."

Technology Review also has an article on coal to natural gas conversion which is encouraging if you're worried about peak oil and gas but very alarming if you're concerned about global warming.

In the second half of the 20th century, oil- and natural gas-burning furnaces drove coal out of the home-heating business across North America. But if Great Point Energy--a Boston-area startup with a low-cost process for converting coal into pipeline-grade natural gas--has its way, coal may start keeping us toasty again before long.

Great Point Energy of Cambridge, MA, says its process is cheaper and more reliable than drilling for new natural gas or importing liquefied natural gas from the same unstable regions. "We can take coal out of the ground and put it in a natural-gas pipeline for less than the cost of new natural-gas drilling and exploration activities," says CEO Andrew Perlman.

Traditional coal-to-methane plants like the 1970s-era Dakota Gasification plant in Beulah, ND, and new plants envisioned by General Electric (GE) and ConocoPhillips are costly because they require a series of chemical plants operating at a wide range of conditions. In these plants, cryogenic equipment operating just a few degrees above absolute zero feeds pure oxygen to the gasifier, where coal baked to up to 2,500 ºF breaks down into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas. From there, the syngas is subsequently catalytically transformed into high-grade methane in a separate reactor.

In contrast, Great Point compresses the process into one single, efficient reactor by moving the catalysts into the gasifier itself. The key is a proprietary, recyclable catalyst developed in house with help from gasification and catalysis experts at Southern Illinois University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Tennessee, among others. The catalyst (which Perlman cagily describes as "a formulation of abundant low-cost metals") lowers the amount of heat required to gasify coal and simultaneously transforms the gasified coal into methane. In fact, the heat released in the syngas-to-methane step is sufficient to sustain the gasification, eliminating the need to fire up the reactions with purified oxygen. "It's perfectly heat balanced," says Perlman.

On the strength of lab-scale demonstrations with its catalyst, Perlman and his partners have picked up $37 million from venture-capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Advanced Technology Ventures to test their catalyst in a pilot plant. Rather than building a pilot plant from scratch, Great Point accelerated the process by leasing one from the utility-supported Gas Technology Institute at Des Plaines, IL.

WorldChanging has a post from Alex Steffen on his thoughts after reading the new IPCC report.

Now that I've had a chance to read the IPCC report and some of the media coverage about its conclusions, here are a few thoughts:

1) The climate debate is over, for good.

"In a grim and powerful assessment of the future of the planet, the leading international network of climate scientists has concluded for the first time that global warming is “unequivocal” and that human activity is the main driver..."

Heck, the climate lobby's taken to having to offer cash rewards to scientists for becoming "skeptics."

2) Climate commitment -- the fact that the actions we've already taken have doomed us to a very serious set of changes to our planet's climate, with disastrous results -- will require us, in some ways, to keep two contradictory ideas in mind at the same time: on the one hand, we need to fight like hell to reduce our carbon emissions to prevent disastrous climate change from turning into an unprecedented catastrophe for human civilization; on the other hand, we have to acknowledge that disaster is upon us, and start preparing our systems to be rugged enough for a world of rising seas, droughts and floods, ecological instability and mass migrations of refugees.

For example, planners in the Bay Area have begun to worry about the costs of dealing with rising sea levels; engineers in Seattle are running studies to anticipate the degree to which this city's water supply (which comes mostly from meltwater from the nearby, snowy Cascade mountains) will be impacted by drier, hotter summers; while in British Columbia, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is bracing itself for possible Katrina-like chaos and floods of climate refugees.

3) What's more, while we're heartened by the media's generally good reporting on the severity and unanimity of the IPCC's conclusions, we're a bit disappointed that more reporters haven't picked up on the fact that the IPCC's conclusions are baselines, conservative findings they were sure they could scientifically defend (and in some cases, even less bold than that) and (as Gil wrote yesterday), many serious scientists believe that the most accurate climate models suggest we can expect to see much more dramatic effects, much more quickly, particularly as regards how quickly the seas will rise. Worse, there has been little acknowledgment that some of the major wildcards, like the possible release of massive amounts of methane from melting permafrost, or a huge change in the climate functions of the ocean due to acidification leads to (as Andy Revkin puts it) "a more than a 1-in-10 chance of much greater warming, a risk that many experts say is far too high to ignore."

4) Climate foresight will be more necessary than ever, and much work remains to be done in both anticipating the possible effects of climate change and helping reshape the public's understanding of the world in which we now live and the futures we're choosing between. We will not do well in this new world thinking as we did in the old.

5) The rapidity with which industry is taking up the banner of building a climate-sane economy is heartening, but cautions remain. Are we aiming high enough: are we pushing towards a climate-neutral (and eventually a climate-restorative) civilization?

6) Carbon blindness should be a constant concern as well: climate change is dire, but it is far from the only problem we face, and if we attempt to tackle it abstractly apart from the myriad of interconnected challenges which face us, we will fail. If nothing else, the climate crisis should teach us that ignoring the big picture and the long term is ruinous to any society. What we need now is not only action, but action with an eye to holistic connections and long-term results. We have a sustainability crisis, of which our destabilization of the climate is but one symptom. We need not just a climate solution, but a bright green future.

7) If we can, in fact, bring our carbon emissions back to a sane level, and perhaps even gradually suck carbon back out of the air, and if we are lucky enough to avoid catastrophic feedback loops, our descendants may, one day in the future, find themselves living on a planet with weather something more like the Earth on which our foreparents lived in the 1700s -- perhaps not the same, but certainly gentler and more to our expectations than that which we will face for the next century or two. So, in some ways, we are squeezing through a bottleneck. Many fine things will be lost in the process. It is not too soon to begin to ask: what must we make sure is saved, and how do we save it?

From seed vaults to marine reserves to frozen arks, much difficult work full of painful choices awaits us. Yet, at the same time, think what a gift it will be to our future generations to have done such work!

8) Finally, I think it's important that we all start imagining that things will work out okay in the long run, and we have an opportunity for adventure and possibility now. The demand for this work is going to outlive everyone reading this today. We must learn to find happiness in the doing of the work, even when the skies are dark. We need, I think, to try to live as well, and fully, and happily as we can, even while we face tough challenges and bad news. We need to do our best to be the future we want to see in the world.

OReilly is organising an energy innovation conference on "The Future of Power and Energy Technology".

Humanity is having a tremendous impact on the environment. Energy production, distribution, and use are a big part of this impact, and yet are critically important to life as we know it. Emerging technologies, ranging from smart buildings and plug-in hybrid vehicles to superconductors and enormous wind turbines, are shaping a transformation in our economy and our lives.

The O'Reilly Energy Innovation Conference is a convergence point for emerging technologies in energy distribution and generation, architecture and construction, and transportation. We'll investigate new technologies applied to conservation and efficiency improvements, as well as radical new tools for increasing supplies and mitigating environmental impacts. Join us August 22—24, 2007 at the San Francisco Marriott as we explore the latest and best power technologies that aim to change our world for the better, and take advantage of the economic opportunities that this change presents. Learn more about the Energy Innovation Conference.

The Call for Participation is now open for the 2007 Energy Innovation Conference. If you're passionate about the technology that will shape our energy future, submit a proposal now to lead sessions and workshops at this inaugural event. Proposals are due by March 7; general registration opens in May.

Allison Randal notes that Google are co-chairing the conference:

We've just launched the call for participation for the Energy Innovation Conference. It's a new conference we're putting on this year in the clean tech/alternative energy space. I'll be co-chairing the conference together with Alec Proudfoot from Google.

This all started a couple years ago in a conversation Tim O'Reilly had with Larry Page and Sergey Brin about the power demands of Google's massive data centers. Energy costs are simply staggering: the cost of powering a server for a year is a greater factor in budget planning than the cost of purchasing the server. The need for efficient production and use of energy is not only relevant to current concerns about oil depletion, pollution, and global warming, but also one of the biggest factors in the shape of future computer technology.

It'll be an interesting conference—a cross section of makers, inventors, VCs, university researchers, car manufacturers, petroleum companies, power distribution companies, government departments, and others, all exploring practical solutions to our energy problems.

I see that Dick Cheney's fund manager has issued a stirring warning about the stupidity of inaction of global warming and the equal stupidity of try to corner the world's remaining oil supplies by military force in a futile quest to achieve "energy security" (while conveniently lining the pockets of the US military industrial complex). "The Street" has a good title for this one - "Cheney's Fund Manager Attacks ... Cheney".

The oil-based energy policies usually associated with Vice President Dick Cheney have just come under scathing attack. There's nothing remarkable about that, of course -- except the person doing the attacking.

Step forward, Jeremy Grantham -- Cheney's own investment manager. "What were we thinking?' Grantham demands in a four-page assault on U.S. energy policy mailed last week to all his clients, including the vice president.

Titled "While America Slept, 1982-2006: A Rant on Oil Dependency, Global Warming, and a Love of Feel-Good Data," Grantham's philippic adds up to an extraordinary critique of U.S. energy policy over the past two decades. What Cheney makes of it can only be imagined.

"Successive U.S. administrations have taken little interest in either oil substitution or climate change," he writes, "and the current one has even seemed to have a vested interest in the idea that the science of climate change is uncertain." Yet "there is now nearly universal scientific agreement that fossil fuel use is causing a rise in global temperatures," he writes. "The U.S. is the only country in which environmental data is steadily attacked in a well-funded campaign of disinformation (funded mainly by one large oil company)."

That's Exxon Mobil (XOM).

As for Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Richard Lindzen, who appears everywhere to question global warming, Grantham mocks him as "the solitary plausible academic [the skeptics] can dig up, out of hundreds working in the field."

And for those nonscientists who are still undecided about the issue, Grantham reminds them of an old logical principle known as Pascal's Paradox. It may be better known as the "what if we're wrong?" argument. If we act to stop global warming and we're wrong, well, we could waste some money. If we don't act, and we're wrong ... you get the picture.

As for the alleged economic costs of going "green," Grantham says that industrialized countries with better fuel efficiency have, on average, enjoyed faster economic growth over the past 50 years than the U.S.

Grantham says that other industrialized countries have far better energy productivity than the U.S. The GDP produced per unit of energy in Italy is 50% higher. Fifty percent. Japan: 60%. And China "already has auto fuel efficiency standards well ahead of the U.S.!" he adds. You've probably heard about China's slow economic growth.

Grantham adds that past U.S. steps in this area, like sulfur dioxide caps adopted by the late President Gerald Ford, have done far more and cost far less than predicted. "Ingenuity sprung out of the woodwork when it was correctly motivated," he writes.

There is also a political and economic cost to our oil dependency, Grantham notes. Yet America could have eliminated its oil dependency on the Middle East years ago with just a "reasonable set of increased efficiencies." All it would take is 10% fewer vehicles, each driving 10% fewer miles and getting 50% more miles per gallon. Under that "sensible but still only moderately aggressive policy," he writes, "not one single barrel would have been needed from the Middle East." Not one.

I repeat: This is not some rainbow coalition. This is not even Al Gore. Grantham is the chairman of Boston-based fund management company Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo.

The New York Review Of Books has a look at the rise of Europe and the decline of America.

The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy
by T.R. Reid
Penguin, 305 pp., $25.95


The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream
by Jeremy Rifkin
Tarcher/Penguin, 434 pp., $25.95


Free World: America, Europe, and the Surprising Future of the West
by Timothy Garton Ash
Random House, 286 pp. $24.95

Consider a mug of American coffee. It is found everywhere. It can be made by anyone. It is cheap—and refills are free. Being largely without flavor it can be diluted to taste. What it lacks in allure it makes up in size. It is the most democratic method ever devised for introducing caffeine into human beings. Now take a cup of Italian espresso. It requires expensive equipment. Price-to-volume ratio is outrageous, suggesting indifference to the consumer and ignorance of the market. The aesthetic satisfaction accessory to the beverage far outweighs its metabolic impact. It is not a drink; it is an artifact.

This contrast can stand for the differences between America and Europe —differences nowadays asserted with increased frequency and not a little acrimony on both sides of the Atlantic. The mutual criticisms are familiar. To American commentators Europe is "stagnant." Its workers, employers, and regulations lack the flexibility and adaptability of their US counterparts. The costs of European social welfare payments and public services are "unsustainable." Europe's aging and "cosseted" populations are underproductive and self-satisfied. In a globalized world, the "European social model" is a doomed mirage. This conclusion is typically drawn even by "liberal" American observers, who differ from conservative (and neoconservative) critics only in deriving no pleasure from it.

To a growing number of Europeans, however, it is America that is in trouble and the "American way of life" that cannot be sustained. The American pursuit of wealth, size, and abundance —as material surrogates for happiness —is aesthetically unpleasing and ecologically catastrophic. The American economy is built on sand (or, more precisely, other people's money). For many Americans the promise of a better future is a fading hope. Contemporary mass culture in the US is squalid and meretricious. No wonder so many Americans turn to the church for solace. ...

PZ Myers is wondering if CNN is competing with Fox to pander to the American fascist crowd.

I mentioned that ghastly CNN hit piece on atheists the other day; I just saw it myself, and it's far, far worse than I had imagined. You can see the whole thing with a transcript, too, and you should be appalled.

It starts off reasonably enough with a segment on a family of atheists who were ostracized in a small town; then it closes with some young Republican-looking talking head who babbles about how atheists bring it on themselves, and we should blame all the militant atheists for the fact that people feel compelled to shun those who don't believe as they do. It was a weird blame-the-victim moment.

Then there's the panel afterwards. Others have mentioned the odd omission of any atheists from the discussion, but I was also flabbergasted at the question they were debating, which was displayed in big letters on a board behind them:

Why do atheists inspire such hatred?

Whoa. Hey, Debbie Schlussel, how would you feel if a panel of Christians and Muslims met to discuss "Why do Jews inspire such hatred?", and they decided that the problem is that Jews need to shut up and quit mentioning their beliefs in public? It's probably silly to ask that of Schlussel who seems to be vapidity personified, but that's really what the panel was about, with two (one was not sympathetic, but at least realized that atheists have the same rights he does) Christian twits telling us that atheists ought to shut up (literally) and that we ought to have prayers in school to restore morality.

It convinced me of a couple of things. I apparently have not been militant enough, and am going to have to work harder at aggressively promoting godlessness. And I'm adding CNN to my list of news agencies to ignore, along with Fox.

Zbigniew Brzezinski (the author of "The Grand Chessboard" no less) has gone in front of Congress and called the Iraq war a calamity and (following Ron Paul's recent example at the same venue) made utterances that sound rather like a warning against the US staging a false flag attack to kick off a war with Iran (there are tinfoil merchants everywhere these days). MonkeyGrinder also has some comments on this one.

TWN has secured testimony being offered by former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski tomorrow morning in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at 9:30 a.m.

Brzezinski will be paired with former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft who will testify about their views on the strategic context of America's actions in Iraq.

This may be covered by C-SPAN but will also be available in full at CNN's Pipeline:

SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITEE TESTIMONY -- ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI

February 1, 2007

Mr. Chairman:

Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in Iraq, and I commend you and Senator Lugar for scheduling them.

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran--though gaining in regional influence--is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Deplorably, the Administration's foreign policy in the Middle East region has lately relied almost entirely on such sloganeering. Vague and inflammatory talk about "a new strategic context" which is based on "clarity" and which prompts "the birth pangs of a new Middle East" is breeding intensifying anti-Americanism and is increasing the danger of a long-term collision between the United States and the Islamic world. Those in charge of U.S. diplomacy have also adopted a posture of moralistic self-ostracism toward Iran strongly reminiscent of John Foster Dulles's attitude of the early 1950's toward Chinese Communist leaders (resulting among other things in the well-known episode of the refused handshake). It took some two decades and a half before another Republican president was finally able to undo that legacy.

One should note here also that practically no country in the world shares the Manichean delusions that the Administration so passionately articulates. The result is growing political isolation of, and pervasive popular antagonism toward the U.S. global posture.

It is obvious by now that the American national interest calls for a significant change of direction. There is in fact a dominant consensus in favor of a change: American public opinion now holds that the war was a mistake; that it should not be escalated, that a regional political process should be explored; and that an Israeli-Palestinian accommodation is an essential element of the needed policy alteration and should be actively pursued. It is noteworthy that profound reservations regarding the Administration's policy have been voiced by a number of leading Republicans. One need only invoke here the expressed views of the much admired President Gerald Ford, former Secretary of State James Baker, former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and several leading Republican senators, John Warner, Chuck Hagel, and Gordon Smith among others.

The urgent need today is for a strategy that seeks to create a political framework for a resolution of the problems posed both by the US occupation of Iraq and by the ensuing civil and sectarian conflict. Ending the occupation and shaping a regional security dialogue should be the mutually reinforcing goals of such a strategy, but both goals will take time and require a genuinely serious U.S. commitment.

The quest for a political solution for the growing chaos in Iraq should involve four steps:

1. The United States should reaffirm explicitly and unambiguously its determination to leave Iraq in a reasonably short period of time.

Ambiguity regarding the duration of the occupation in fact encourages unwillingness to compromise and intensifies the on-going civil strife. Moreover, such a public declaration is needed to allay fears in the Middle East of a new and enduring American imperial hegemony. Right or wrong, many view the establishment of such a hegemony as the primary reason for the American intervention in a region only recently free of colonial domination. That perception should be discredited from the highest U.S. level. Perhaps the U.S. Congress could do so by a joint resolution.

2. The United States should announce that it is undertaking talks with the Iraqi leaders to jointly set with them a date by which U.S. military disengagement should be completed, and the resulting setting of such a date should be announced as a joint decision. In the meantime, the U.S. should avoid military escalation.

It is necessary to engage all Iraqi leaders--including those who do not reside within "the Green Zone"--in a serious discussion regarding the proposed and jointly defined date for U.S. military disengagement because the very dialogue itself will help identify the authentic Iraqi leaders with the self-confidence and capacity to stand on their own legs without U.S. military protection. Only Iraqi leaders who can exercise real power beyond "the Green Zone" can eventually reach a genuine Iraqi accommodation. The painful reality is that much of the current Iraqi regime, characterized by the Bush administration as "representative of the Iraqi people," defines itself largely by its physical location: the 4 sq. miles-large U.S. fortress within Baghdad, protected by a wall in places 15 feet thick, manned by heavily armed U.S. military, popularly known as "the Green Zone."

3. The United States should issue jointly with appropriate Iraqi leaders, or perhaps let the Iraqi leaders issue, an invitation to all neighbors of Iraq (and perhaps some other Muslim countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Pakistan) to engage in a dialogue regarding how best to enhance stability in Iraq in conjunction with U.S. military disengagement and to participate eventually in a conference regarding regional stability.

The United States and the Iraqi leadership need to engage Iraq's neighbors in serious discussion regarding the region's security problems, but such discussions cannot be undertaken while the U.S. is perceived as an occupier for an indefinite duration. Iran and Syria have no reason to help the United States consolidate a permanent regional hegemony. It is ironic, however, that both Iran and Syria have lately called for a regional dialogue, exploiting thereby the self-defeating character of the largely passive - and mainly sloganeering - U.S. diplomacy.

A serious regional dialogue, promoted directly or indirectly by the U.S., could be buttressed at some point by a wider circle of consultations involving other powers with a stake in the region's stability, such as the EU, China, Japan, India, and Russia. Members of this Committee might consider exploring informally with the states mentioned their potential interest in such a wider dialogue.

4. Concurrently, the United States should activate a credible and energetic effort to finally reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace, making it clear in the process as to what the basic parameters of such a final accommodation ought to involve.

The United States needs to convince the region that the U.S. is committed both to Israel's enduring security and to fairness for the Palestinians who have waited for more than forty years now for their own separate state. Only an external and activist intervention can promote the long-delayed settlement for the record shows that the Israelis and the Palestinians will never do so on their own. Without such a settlement, both nationalist and fundamentalist passions in the region will in the longer run doom any Arab regime which is perceived as supportive of U.S. regional hegemony.

After World War II, the United States prevailed in the defense of democracy in Europe because it successfully pursued a long-term political strategy of uniting its friends and dividing its enemies, of soberly deterring aggression without initiating hostilities, all the while also exploring the possibility of negotiated arrangements. Today, America's global leadership is being tested in the Middle East. A similarly wise strategy of genuinely constructive political engagement is now urgently needed.

It is also time for the Congress to assert itself.

The President of the United States and Secretary of State would restore some of their lost luster by making some combination of James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Brent Scowcroft co-Middle East Envoys to help take this penultimate quagmire we are in a direction that might start a virtuous cycle of possibilities rather than the disaster that is unfolding.

Even the US media is starting to whimper a little about the pre-war propaganda machine grinding back into life.

It's 4 years and a day since Colin Powell gave his "damning" and almost entirely false speech to the UN that put the final nail in the coffin of what is now over 3,000 American soldiers and over a half million Iraqis.

The press lapped it up, coming as it did from the administration's most skeptical cabinet-member and resident "centrist."

As Iraq devolves into a chaos (the long-awaited 2007 National Intelligence Estimate uses the term "Civil War" to describe parts of Iraq) and the administration marches toward war on Iran, the press has yawned and stretched and tried to come to life. To paraphrase Dolly Parton.

The following is the transcript of the video to the right, featuring two reporters tired of being jerked around by a duplicitous White House. They simply don't trust them. No pumping fists here... just a "finally you're doing your job."

Hat tip to Editor & Publisher for finding this exchange.


-----

Q Steve, in 2002 and 2003, in the run-up to the Iraq war, the administration made statements that were obviously not borne by facts subsequently. And it later came out that caveats from the intelligence community, caveats from Energy Department analysts, those were left out of public statements of Vice President Cheney, the President, others in the administration. Now when it comes to Iran, you've been saying for months that Iran is a key driver of violence in Iraq. You've said there is evidence tying Iran to attacks in Iraq. You've said that you'd make that evidence public. That supposed to be made public on the 31st.

MR. HADLEY: Right.

Q It wasn't.

MR. HADLEY: That's correct.

Q Now you have this report saying it contributes in some way, so does Syria, so do other factors, but it is not, in and of itself, causing the violence, nor would the violence stop if Iranian influence stopped.

MR. HADLEY: I didn't read it that way...

Q You see it on the second --

MR. HADLEY: "Iraq's neighbors influence and are influenced by events within Iraq. But the involvement of these outside -- is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospect for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics."

We need to get control of that. Now, to the extent Iraqi support -- sorry, Iranian support is going to extremist groups that are participating in that sectarian violence, it is obviously a factor. And as we talked about it more broadly, they are, of course, a disruptive factor in the region.

The reason we put the intelligence briefing on hold was really two reasons. One, we thought we'd better get the NIE out so people could see the full context, which you now can. And secondly, quite frankly, we want to make sure that if we put out intelligence, the intelligence community and MNFI can stand behind it, because we are sensitive to try and put out the facts as accurately as we can.

Q When will that be, that briefing?

MR. HADLEY: When this process gets done, the briefing will be -- will come out.I don't think there's a timetable on this point since it's slipped a couple times. We want to get the work done so that we can get people a firm date and that we won't have to change.

Q Even though it was already scheduled and officials in Baghdad gave a date, they gave a time, and in some cases, they gave a place?

MR. HADLEY: Correct.

Q And now it's been pushed back. Can we conclude anything from that other than people looked at the intelligence that was set to offered and said, this is not good enough?

MR. HADLEY: No, I wouldn't --

Q Does that mean there was a willingness to overstate it?

MR. HADLEY: The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated. And we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts. And that's not a criticism of anybody. It was, in some sense, an attempt to do and address some of the issues in the NIE in a briefing on intelligence of Iranian activity in Iraq. And we thought, hey, why are we doing this? Let's get the NIE out, the coordinated intelligence judgment of the intelligence community. And then with that as context, get a briefing that is focused on and one that we're confident everyone can stand behind.

Q Mr. Hadley, given the track record on weapons of mass destruction, and recent events that have alleged that intelligence has been cherry-picked and pulled selectively, how can the public be assured that intelligence is driving the policy and not the other way around, that it's being tailored to what the President and the Vice President want the policy to be?

MR. HADLEY: By putting out things like this, the coordinated judgment of the intelligence community, so you can see the intelligence on which the policy was based.

Q How can we be assured that this wasn't written for that purpose?

MR. HADLEY: Well, you can talk to the intelligence community. This came from the NIC -- the National Intelligence Council. And it came out of that process. It was not a result of a policy process. It was a result of the intelligence process. And there was no effort to put a policy spin on that by the White House. This is a thing we got roughly a day or two before you.

MonkeyGrinder also ponders recent reports that methane hydrates are starting to melt in the Arctic (translation: We're all going to die. Soon. If the reports are true.).

Origin of pingo-like features on the Beaufort Sea shelf and their possible relationship to decomposing methane gas hydrates
...
Abstract

The Arctic shelf is currently undergoing dramatic thermal changes caused by the continued warming associated with Holocene sea level rise. During this transgression, comparatively warm waters have flooded over cold permafrost areas of the Arctic Shelf. A thermal pulse of more than 10°C is still propagating down into the submerged sediment and may be decomposing gas hydrate as well as permafrost. A search for gas venting on the Arctic seafloor focused on pingo-like-features (PLFs) on the Beaufort Sea Shelf because they may be a direct consequence of gas hydrate decomposition at depth. Vibracores collected from eight PLFs had systematically elevated methane concentrations. ROV observations revealed streams of methane-rich gas bubbles coming from the crests of PLFs. We offer a scenario of how PLFs may be growing offshore as a result of gas pressure associated with gas hydrate decomposition.

The above abstract is an interesting data point. Earlier this year I referenced an intriguing rumor which was unsubstantiated, yet suggestive:

Fuel tankers reporting increased methane venting from sea beds.

According to U.S. maritime industry sources, tanker captains are reporting an increase in onboard alarms from hazard sensors designed to detect hydrocarbon gas leaks and, specifically, methane leaks. However, the leaks are not emanating from cargo holds or pump rooms but from continental shelves venting increasing amounts of trapped methane into the atmosphere.

Oceanic methane can get powerful warm when unfrozen, trapping atmospheric heat left and right. The cows will be proud. However, do not become unduly alarmed.

If we stand on the cusp of a new thermal maximum, a pesky die-off, be assured that there is hope. Look to the humble Lystrosaurus, a hard charging reptile which survived where many others failed:

Lystrosaurus is notable for dominating land during the Early Triassic, found on every continent, for millions of years. This genus survived the end-Permian mass extinction and went on to thrive, becoming the most common group of terrestrial vertebrates during the Early Triassic. It is the only time a single species of animal dominated the Earth to such a degree. Why Lystrosaurus survived the Permian-Triassic extinction event may possibly be due to blind chance, however, adaptations to surviving on more resiliant plant material may have contributed to this genus' survival.

Blind chance? You be the judge.

It isn't just the handsome tusks, suitable for ripping carrion flesh from the backs of Exxon executives and their mercenary army of paid deniers / elephant gropers.

Look where the nose of the Lystrosaurus is pointed. Inches from the ground.

That is where the breathable oxygen will be if we fail.

Take a good look.

There is one scenario that I find even more alarming than the possibility of the methane hydrates melting and the Permian Extinction being repeated on us - and that's someone taking out the internet. What the hell would I do once I'd finished getting through my book pile - go and watch TV ? Its too frightening a possibility to even contemplate...

Hackers briefly overwhelmed at least three of the 13 computers that help manage global computer traffic Tuesday in one of the most significant attacks against the Internet since 2002.

Experts said the unusually powerful attacks lasted as long as 12 hours but passed largely unnoticed by most computer users, a testament to the resiliency of the Internet. Behind the scenes, computer scientists worldwide raced to cope with enormous volumes of data that threatened to saturate some of the Internet’s most vital pipelines.

The Homeland Security Department confirmed it was monitoring what it called “anomalous” Internet traffic.

“There is no credible intelligence to suggest an imminent threat to the homeland or our computing systems at this time,” the department said in a statement.

The motive for the attacks was unclear, said Duane Wessels, a researcher at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis at the San Diego Supercomputing Center. “Maybe to show off or just be disruptive; it doesn’t seem to be extortion or anything like that,” Wessels said.

Other experts said the hackers appeared to disguise their origin, but vast amounts of rogue data in the attacks were traced to South Korea.

The attacks appeared to target UltraDNS, the company that operates servers managing traffic for Web sites ending in “org” and some other suffixes, experts said. Officials with NeuStar Inc., which owns UltraDNS, confirmed only that it had observed an unusual increase in traffic.

Among the targeted “root” servers that manage global Internet traffic were ones operated by the Defense Department and the Internet’s primary oversight body.

“There was what appears to be some form of attack during the night hours here in California and into the morning,” said John Crain, chief technical officer for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. He said the attack was continuing and so was the hunt for its origin.

“I don’t think anybody has the full picture,” Crain said. “We’re looking at the data.”

Crain said Tuesday’s attack was less serious than attacks against the same 13 “root” servers in October 2002 because technology innovations in recent years have increasingly distributed their workloads to other computers around the globe.