[Biofuel] Arctic Expert on Sea Ice: We Could "Reach Zero" Within Two Years
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37686-arctic-expert-on-sea-ice-we-could-reach-zero-within-two-years [image and links in on-line article] Arctic Expert on Sea Ice: We Could "Reach Zero" Within Two Years Wednesday, 21 September 2016 00:00 By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Interview Arctic sea ice is in big trouble. This is bad news for multiple reasons, the primary one being that Arctic sea ice helps keep the polar regions cool along with working to moderate the entire global climate. "Sea ice has a bright surface; 80 percent of the sunlight that strikes it is reflected back into space," explains the National Snow and Ice Data Center's website. "As sea ice melts in the summer, it exposes the dark ocean surface. Instead of reflecting 80 percent of the sunlight, the ocean absorbs 90 percent of the sunlight. The oceans heat up, and Arctic temperatures rise further." This also explains the most well-known -- and what is most likely the most important -- climate-related positive feedback loop, which has already spun out of control. When it comes to anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD), the Arctic is the proverbial canary in the coalmine. And if Arctic sea ice expert Dr. Peter Wadhams is right, that canary will likely be gone within two years. This would be the first time in more than 10,000 years that the Arctic sea ice has disappeared. Dr. Wadhams has been a professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University since 2001 and was the director of the Scott Polar Institute there from 1987 to 1992. He has also made more than 50 trips to the Arctic. Dr. Wadhams was one of the very first scientists to show that the icecap that once covered the entire Arctic Ocean was starting to both grow thinner and shrink in area. Dr. Wadhams recently published A Farewell to Ice, a book that explains, in depth, how the sea ice is vanishing at an alarming rate, and details the dire consequences for the Earth if the sea ice continues to disappear at these rates. His work and recent book could not be more relevant, as it has been a record hot year for the planet -- and Arctic sea ice is, by most measurements, on pace to reach its second-lowest annual minimum, with open water gaps appearing even near the North Pole. Current tracking shows that the sea ice is following a steady downward trajectory of melting, and there is no evidence to indicate that this trend will not continue. This makes sense, given that recently released NASA data show that August was the hottest August since record-keeping began, and it tied July for the warmest month ever recorded. Truthout interviewed Dr. Wadhams to provide a more in-depth perspective about what it means for the planet to lose Arctic sea ice. Truthout: Numerous people have predicted the vanishing of the Arctic sea ice in summer, including a US Navy study that predicted it by this summer, but they've all been too early in their predictions. Why do you feel confident about predicting that summer Arctic sea ice will disappear in either 2017 or 2018 at the latest? Dr. Peter Wadhams: I don't feel confident -- it's simply that this is the trend shown by the sea ice volume in recent years, and since that volume is now quite small, it ought to reach zero within one to two more years. But, of course, something could happen to change that. How does the rate of Arctic sea ice loss now compare to, say, 20 years ago? The rate of change of area (averaged over the year) has increased from 3 percent per decade to 8 percent per decade. What are the immediate and most dramatic regional impacts of the loss of the summer Arctic sea ice on the Arctic? First, the loss from the shallow shelf areas north of Siberia is dangerous because it encourages emission of methane from the sea bed as the offshore permafrost melts. Secondly, the loss from Baffin Bay and East Greenland in summer encourages warm winds over the Greenland ice sheet, which cause ice-sheet melt and accelerated sea level rise. How will global climate be impacted by the loss of the summer Arctic sea ice? The main effect is global albedo reduction. [Albedo, a critically important element of ACD, is the Earth's measure of reflectivity. When Earth's albedo increases, more sunlight and solar radiation is reflected back into space.] This has been calculated as equivalent to adding 25 percent to the warming effect of the greenhouse gases alone. Albedo reduction due to parallel snow area loss [less snow means less albedo/reflectivity, which means more solar radiation and heat are absorbed by Earth] adds another 25 percent. We have reported quite extensively on the threat of increasing amounts of methane being released as permafrost melts. Why should people be concerned about methane releases in the Arctic, and the fact that these are increasing? We have modeled what would happen if the rate of emission increased radically to be equivalent to a 50-gigaton pulse (predicted by
[Biofuel] Archeologists denounce Dakota Access pipeline for destroying artifacts | US news | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/22/archeologists-denounce-dakota-access-pipeline-artifacts Archeologists denounce Dakota Access pipeline for destroying artifacts Coalition of 1,200 archeologists, museum directors and historians say $3.8bn Dakota Access pipeline disturbs Native American artifacts in North Dakota Archeologists and museum directors have denounced the “destruction” of Native American artifacts during the construction of a contentious oil pipeline in North Dakota, as the affected tribe condemned the project in an address to the United Nations. The $3.8bn Dakota Access pipeline, which will funnel oil from the Bakken oil fields in the Great Plains to Illinois, will run next to the Standing Rock Sioux reservation. The tribe has mounted a legal challenge to stop the project and claimed that several sacred sites were bulldozed by Energy Transfer, the company behind the pipeline, on 3 September. A coalition of more than 1,200 archeologists, museum directors and historians from institutions including the Smithsonian and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries has written to the Obama administration to criticize the bulldozing, which Energy Transfer claims did not disturb any artifacts. The letter states that the construction work destroyed “ancient burial sites, places of prayer and other significant cultural artifacts sacred to the Lakota and Dakota people”. It adds: “The destruction of these sacred sites adds yet another injury to the Lakota, Dakota and other Indigenous Peoples who bear the impacts of fossil fuel extraction and transportation. If constructed, this pipeline will continue to encourage oil consumption that causes climate change, all the while harming those populations who contributed little to this crisis.” The Obama administration has halted construction of the 1,170-mile pipeline that occurs on federal land while it reassesses the initial decision by the Army Corps of Engineers to allow the project to proceed. The approval sparked furious protests at a camp near the North Dakota construction site but Energy Transfer has vowed to push ahead after a federal judge sided with the company. “What the Standing Rock Sioux are going through is just one example of a systemic and historical truth around how extractive and polluting infrastructure is forced upon Native communities,” said James Powell, former president and director of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. “It is long past time for us to abandon fossil fuel projects that harm native communities and threaten the future of our planet.” The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has taken its case to the UN, addressing the human rights commission in Geneva on Tuesday. Dave Archambault II, chairman of the tribe, said that Energy Transfer has shown “total disregard for our rights and our sacred sites”. “Thousands have gathered peacefully in Standing Rock in solidarity against the pipeline,” Archambault told commission members. “And yet many water protectors have been threatened and even injured by the pipeline’s security officers. One child was bitten and injured by a guard dog. We stand in peace but have been met with violence.” Archambault said the pipeline violates the UN’s declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples and called on the UN to use its “influence and international platform” to help the tribe. Energy Transfer did not respond to a request for comment. The company has previously denounced “threats and attacks” perpetrated upon its employees. -- Darryl McMahon Active optimism: What's the best that could happen? (now, go MAKE it happen) ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] EPA Plans to Allow Unlimited Dumping of Fracking Wastewater in the Gulf of Mexico
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37710-epa-plans-to-allow-unlimited-dumping-of-fracking-wastewater-in-the-gulf-of-mexico [links in on-line article] EPA Plans to Allow Unlimited Dumping of Fracking Wastewater in the Gulf of Mexico Thursday, 22 September 2016 00:00 By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | News Analysis Environmentalists are warning the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that its draft plan to continue allowing oil and gas companies to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and wastewater directly into the Gulf of Mexico is in violation of federal law. In a letter sent to EPA officials on Monday, attorneys for the Center for Biological Diversity warned that the agency's draft permit for water pollution discharges in the Gulf fails to properly consider how dumping wastewater containing chemicals from fracking and acidizing operations would impact water quality and marine wildlife. The attorneys claim that regulators do not fully understand how the chemicals used in offshore fracking and other well treatments -- some of which are toxic and dangerous to human and marine life -- can impact marine environments, and crucial parts of the draft permit are based on severely outdated data. Finalizing the draft permit as it stands would be a violation of the Clean Water Act, they argue. "The EPA is endangering an entire ecosystem by allowing the oil industry to dump unlimited amounts of fracking chemicals and drilling waste fluid into the Gulf of Mexico," said Center attorney Kristen Monsell. "This appalling plan from the agency that's supposed to protect our water violates federal law, and shows a disturbing disregard for offshore fracking's toxic threats to sea turtles and other Gulf wildlife." The Center has a history of using legal action to stop polluters and challenge the government to enforce environmental regulations, so the letter could be seen as a warning shot over the EPA's bow. Earlier this year, lawsuits filed by the Center and another group won a temporary moratorium on offshore fracking in the Pacific Ocean, and the groups are currently preparing to challenge fracking in the Santa Barbara Channel under the Endangered Species Act. Offshore fracking involves pumping water, chemicals and sand at extremely high pressure into undersea wells to break up rock and sand formations and clear pathways for oil and gas. Offshore drillers also treat wells with corrosive acids, such as hydrochloric acid, in a process known as "acidizing." The technologies have been used hundreds of times to enhance oil and gas production at hundreds of Gulf wells in recent years, and environmentalists say use of the technology could increase in the future as the industry seeks to maximize production in aging offshore fields. Still, little was publicly known about these "well treatments" until Truthout and environmental groups began filing information requests with federal regulators. Regulators and the fossil fuel industry say offshore fracking operations have a good safety record and tend to be smaller in size compared to onshore operations, but environmentalists continue to worry about the chemicals used in the process because many of them are known to harm marine wildlife. Plus, dolphins and other species in the Gulf are still suffering from the lingering effects of the 2010 BP oil spill. Under the EPA's current and draft permits, offshore drillers are allowed to dump an unlimited amount of fracking and acidizing chemicals overboard as long as they are mixed with the wastewater that returns from undersea wells. Oil and gas platforms dumped more than 75 billion gallons of these "produced waters" directly into the Gulf of Mexico in 2014 alone, according to the Center's analysis of EPA records. These large volumes of wastewater cannot contain oil and must meet toxicity standards, but oil and gas operators are only required to test the waste stream a few times a year. Monsell said these tests could easily be conducted at times when few or no fracking chemicals are present in the wastewater. The EPA expects these chemicals to have little impact on the environment because the large volumes of wastewater and the ocean dilute them, but the Center points out that much of the EPA's data on the subject comes from studies prepared in the 1980s and 1990s. Offshore production technology has advanced since then and hundreds of frack jobs have occurred in the Gulf in the past five years alone. "All they have to do is ask the Interior Department for this information, because they just compiled it all for us," said Monsell, referring to the thousands of documents recently released to Truthout and the Center under the Freedom of Information Act. These documents, released under a legal settlement between the Interior Department and the Center, show that regulators approved more than 1,500 frack jobs at over 600 Gulf wells between 2010 and 2014 with
[Biofuel] Nestlé Can Keep Piping Water Out of Drought-Stricken California Despite Permit Expiring in 1988
http://www.ecowatch.com/nestle-bottled-water-drought-2012310851.html Sep. 22, 2016 09:39AM EST Nestlé Can Keep Piping Water Out of Drought-Stricken California Despite Permit Expiring in 1988 Lorraine Chow In a major setback for environmental groups, a federal judge in California has tossed out allegations that the U.S. Forest Service allowed Nestlé's bottled water operation to take water from the San Bernardino National Forest on a permit that expired back in 1988. The decision regards a lawsuit filed against the Forest Service in October 2015 by the Courage Campaign Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Story of Stuff Project. The groups alleged that the agency was allowing Nestlé Waters North America to pipe water from public lands on a permit that had long expired. With the ruling, the multinational food and drink corporation can continue its use of a four-mile pipeline that siphons thousands of gallons of public water a day from the Strawberry Creek watershed and sell it back to the public as bottled water. The water is sold under the Arrowhead brand. U.S. District Judge Jesus Bernal wrote in a Sept. 20 order that since the Forest Service received a request to renew the permit in May 1987, the effort was considered a "timely and sufficient application for renewal," thus keeping the original permit valid. Bernal rejected the plaintiffs's argument that the Forest Service's failure to act on the May 1987 request renders the permit invalid. "Plantiffs do not identify, and the court cannot find, any authority holding that an agency's failure to act within a reasonable time" invalidates a special use permit, Bernal wrote. The decision was criticized by the three environmental groups that initiated the lawsuit. -- Darryl McMahon Active optimism: What's the best that could happen? (now, go MAKE it happen) ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] 40 Years Ago, This Chilean Exile Warned Us About the Shock Doctrine. Then He Was Assassinated. | The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/40-years-ago-this-chilean-exile-warned-us-about-the-shock-doctrine-then-he-was-assassinated/ 40 Years Ago, This Chilean Exile Warned Us About the Shock Doctrine. Then He Was Assassinated. Orlando Letelier’s 1976 Nation essay is still essential reading. By Naomi Klein 2016.09.21 In August 1976, The Nation published an essay that rocked the US political establishment, both for what it said and for who was saying it. “The ‘Chicago Boys’ in Chile: Economic ‘Freedom’s’ Awful Toll” was written by Orlando Letelier, the former right-hand man of Chilean President Salvador Allende. Earlier in the decade, Allende had appointed Letelier to a series of top-level positions in his democratically elected socialist government: ambassador to the United States (where he negotiated the terms of nationalization for several US-owned firms operating in Chile), minister of foreign affairs, and, finally, minister of defense. Then, on September 11, 1973, Chile’s government was overthrown in a bloody, CIA-backed coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. This shattering event left Allende dead in the smoldering presidential palace and Letelier and other “VIP prisoners” banished to a remote labor camp in the Strait of Magellan. After a powerful international campaign lobbied for Letelier’s release, the junta finally allowed him to go into exile. The 44-year-old former ambassador moved to Washington, DC; in 1976, when his Nation essay appeared, he was working at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a left-wing think tank. Haunted by thoughts of his colleagues and friends still behind bars, many facing gruesome torture, Letelier used his newly recovered freedom to expose Pinochet’s crimes and to defend Allende’s record against the CIA propaganda machine. This kind of activism was having an effect. Pinochet faced universal condemnation for his human-rights rec- ord, which became impossible to ignore: the mass disappearances and executions of leftists (more than 3,200 dead by the end of the junta’s rule); the imprisonment of tens of thousands of people; the complete bans on political protest and dissenting political activity; the murder of beloved artists like Víctor Jara; the roughly 200,000 people forced into exile. What frustrated Letelier, a trained economist, was that, even as the world gasped in horror at reports of summary executions in the national stadium and the pervasive use of electroshock in prisons, most critics were silent when it came to Chile’s economic shock therapy—the brutal methods used by the “Chicago Boys” to turn Chile into the very first laboratory for Milton Friedman’s fundamentalist version of capitalism. Indeed, many who condemned Pinochet’s human-rights record heaped praise on the dictator for his bold embrace of free-market fundamentals, which included rapid-fire privatization, the elimination of price controls on staples like bread, and attacks on trade unions. Letelier set out to explode this comfortable elite consensus with a litany of factual evidence and persuasive rhetoric. He argued that the junta wasn’t pursuing two separate, easily compartmentalized projects—one a visionary experiment in economic transformation, the other a grisly system of torture and terror. There was, in fact, only one project, in which terror was the central tool of the free-market transformation. “Repression for the majorities and ‘economic freedom’ for small privileged groups are in Chile two sides of the same coin,” Letelier wrote. He went further still, arguing that Friedman, the famed US economist who served as “the intellectual architect and unofficial adviser for the team of economists now running the Chilean economy,” shared responsibility for Pinochet’s crimes. (Friedman’s name comes up in the essay 19 times.) Letelier dismissed Friedman’s claim that urging Pinochet to introduce economic “shock treatment” (as the Chicago economist put it at the time) was merely “technical” advice, unrelated to the human-rights abuses. On the contrary, Letelier insisted that Pinochet’s political violence was what made his economic violence possible. Indeed, only by murdering and imprisoning left leaders, and by terrorizing the wider society, could Pinochet force the same nation that had democratically elected Allende a few years earlier to accept this savage clawback of social gains. As the late Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano would put it a decade later: “How can this inequality be maintained if not through jolts of electric shock?” * * * Letelier’s essay was so bold and persuasive that it had an immediate impact, provoking debate and defensive responses. Yet much of why we’re still reading it today has to do with what happened next. On September 21, 1976, less than one month after the article’s publication, Letelier was murdered—assassinated in a car bombing in the embassy district of Washington, DC. His
[Biofuel] Globalization Means More Deaths for Refugees Who Are Disposable to Neoliberals
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/globalization-means-more-deaths-for-refugees-of-the-neoliberal-winners Globalization Means More Deaths for Refugees Who Are Disposable to Neoliberals MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT Just how much does the mainstream press like to spend days upon days getting sucked into a farcical debate about whether Donald Trump is "officially" a birther or not? I've written it before and I'll write it again: In 2016, if it's not entertaining, it's not news. Donald Trump is like a bigoted vaudeville comedian resurrected from mothballs, a bombastic bloviator who knows how to dominate the midway at a state fair. He is a cross between a tin-siding salesman, a demagogue and -- as he told Marureen Dowd recently -- a promoter of the frisson (shudder of excitement) of violence. What passes for US mass media today is -- speaking of violence -- a megaphone for vitriol, scapegoating, and cheap "shock jock" tricks. Meanwhile, national and global events that shape lives and lead to untimely deaths pass with barely a headline, shoved to the background by the grand carnival known as the 2016 US presidential election. How many examples of the planet's dire needs -- and potential solutions -- could be covered as part of the daily news if titillation and personality gaffes were not the primary stories driving the news? Occasionally, the reality of our dystopian world receives coverage, like a head bobbing briefly up above the water -- and then sinking back down to drown. That's an analogy that relates directly to one particular reality: As Middle East Eye reported today, at least 39 people were killed this morning when a migrant boat sank off the coast of Egypt. "Over 3,000 people have drowned in the Mediterranean on the way to Europe so far this year," according to Middle East Eye. On December 30, 2015, the UN Refugee Agency stated that "figures show over one million refugees and migrants reach[ed] Europe by sea in 2015, with almost 4,000 feared drowned." Another UN Refugee Agency article this past June found: Global forced displacement hits record high: UNHCR Global Trends report finds 65.3 million people, or one person in 113, were displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution in 2015. Wars and persecution have driven more people from their homes than at any time since UNHCR records began, according to a new report released today by the UN Refugee Agency. The US is witnessing a perfect storm of an election whose only winners will be profits for television executives and shareholders, campaign cash for politicians, bonuses for lobbyists and increased control for the oligarchs, no matter which candidate triumphs in November. Our election process is now a jingoistic claim to democracy unfolding as buffoonery. While the US lives off its economic empire, controlling nations through financial dominance, the nations of the Global South and the non-wealthy in the United States are being fed a diet of hate, vulgarity and Howard Stern in a billionaire's suit. As for the refugee crisis, the vast majority of refugees and migrants fleeing the Middle East are doing so because of the blowback caused by Western military interventionism aimed at preserving access to oil reserves. How often does this reality come up, in terms of either the refugee crisis or the issue of terrorism? Almost never, except in progressive publications such as Truthout. How can such massive challenges be resolved when a nation such as the United States -- with 5 percent of the world's population, using 25 percent of the world's resources -- treats a presidential election with all the dignity and thoughtfulness of a World Wrestling Entertainment match? The International Business Times reported this March: When protests erupted across Syria as part of a freedom movement that swept several Arab countries in 2011, not many could have foreseen the devastation that would take place in the ensuing five years. Today, between 270,000 and 470,000 people have been killed, and more than half the population of 22 million has been displaced. NASA footage has shown that the country has literally plunged into darkness, as more than 83 percent of Syria’s lights have gone out. One could argue that Syria is not a big oil producer, but it is part of the great game of determining who will impact oil policy in the Middle East, particularly because of its amiable relationship with Iran. So, what is more important in a presidential election: our impact on the lives of millions and millions of people (including our military role without end in Iraq, Afghanistan and other states) or, as CNN reported the other day, "Ivanka Trump cuts off Cosmo interview after tough questioning"? Does the future of the world depend on whether Cosmopolitan magazine and Ivanka Trump will reconcile? Should refugees simply be treated as exploitation and "collateral
