Re: [Biofuel] Anti-nuclear madness doesn't jibe with concern about global warming
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/print/eo20121129a3.html Good time to show he deserves the Nobel Prize By RALPH A. COSSA and DAVID SANTORO HONOLULU - At a recent international conference, a colleague asked, somewhat irreverently (but not irrelevantly), Now that Obama has been re-elected, will he finally earn his Nobel Prize? It's a fair question. Hopes were high in the international disarmament community after President Barack Obama's 2009 Prague speech when he pledged to move toward a nuclear weapons-free world. But those who cheered the loudest then are among the most disappointed now, frustrated over the slow progress toward this goal. To be fair, some important steps forward were taken. The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) focused on Reducing the Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons while stating the objective of making deterrence of nuclear attack the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons. While this fell far short of a no first use pledge, it was a significant step in that direction. The NPR also states unequivocally that the United States will not develop new nuclear warheads. Obama also achieved ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia, which reduced both nations' nuclear weapons inventories. The administration's willingness to immediately and aggressively seek ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) proved in vain, as did efforts to conclude a fissile material cut-off treaty. The Obama-initiated Nuclear Security Summit's goal to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years has not materialized; at home the administration stepped back from the spent fuel repository at Yucca Mountain without any alternative in sight and the North Korean and Iranian nuclear crises remain unresolved. While it would be unfair to blame Obama for failing to find solutions to all these problems, it is important to reflect on what we can realistically expect him to accomplish over the next four years. In the Asia-Pacific, the major power agenda consists of two sets of relationships: one among the U.S., Russia and China, the other among China, India, and Pakistan. The U.S., Russia, and China essentially deter one another. While Washington (and Moscow) may worry that deeper reductions may tempt Beijing to sprint to parity, China's minimal deterrence strategy already provides strategic stability. China, for its part, worries not only about the U.S. (and Russia?), but also increasingly about India, while Pakistan has been rapidly building up its own arsenal in response to India's military capabilities. Attempts by New Delhi to counter Pakistan's moves would likely drive China to respond, which would in turn impact the U.S. and Russia. The future of this agenda will be determined mainly by decisions made in Beijing, New Delhi and Islamabad. Similarly, America's ability to strengthen deterrence and reassure its Asian allies is increasingly under stress. China's slow but steady military modernization and North Korea's nuclear weapon development are transforming the Asian security environment and raised concerns about the reliability of the U.S. extended deterrent. Despite the U.S. rebalancing toward Asia, regional partners question the role the U.S. intends to play in the region and if it is sustainable in a fiscally constrained environment. Significantly, despite Tokyo and Seoul's proclaimed continued faith in U.S. security assurances, a growing number of voices in both countries (especially South Korea) have argued for the development of independent nuclear weapon capabilities. And while Canberra has continued to stress the centrality of the U.S. alliance (and accepted additional U.S. forces on Australian territory), a growing number of Australians have begun to contemplate a reduced U.S. presence in the region: Some support the U.S. strategic presence but reject the nuclear dimension of that presence; a minority is ambivalent about whether the alliance is good for Australia. Finally, the U.S. ability to combat the proliferation-terrorism nexus has proved limited. Although U.S. endorsement of nuclear disarmament has improved the atmospherics, little tangible progress has been achieved on the nonproliferation and nuclear security fronts. Many Non-Aligned Movement members in Asia (and beyond) continue to argue that the baby steps undertaken thus far do not justify more efforts from them on nonproliferation and nuclear security. This seems remarkably shortsighted since proliferation and especially acts of nuclear terrorism will have a much greater impact on their societies and economies than most seem willing to acknowledge. But the quid pro quo mentality remains nonetheless. Be it to address the major power agenda, to reassure its allies and partners, or to combat nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation, U.S. power and influence to respond to these challenges is much more modest
[Biofuel] Japan: Support for whaling outweighs opposition: animal rights survey
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/print/nn20121129f5.html Support for whaling outweighs opposition: animal rights survey AFP-Jiji More Japanese support the whale hunt than oppose it, according to a survey carried out on behalf of animal rights activists. Of 1,200 people questioned for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, 26.8 percent said Japan should continue hunting whales, against 18.5 percent who oppose it. The remainder expressed no opinion. The hunt is based on a loophole for scientific research in the global moratorium on whaling, though the meat is later sold in shops and restaurants. The government makes the argument that hunting whales is deeply embedded in Japanese culture and wants to resume commercial operations. Environmentalists routinely condemn the hunt and maintain it doesn't have the support of the Japanese people. In a press release, the International Fund for Animal Welfare tried to put a positive gloss on the survey, which questioned people aged 15 to 79 nationwide over a 13-day period in October. The good people of Japan are taking whale meat off the menu, said Patrick Ramage, director of the IFAW's global whale program, citing the 88.8 percent of respondents who said they had not bought whale meat in the last year. The survey did not provide results for how many people actually ate whale meat during that period. The Fisheries Agency reportedly plans to start selling whale meat by mail order, saying the move is aimed at boosting consumption after demand fell as prices rose. The IFAW opposes all commercial and scientific whaling and advocates whale-watching programs that it says generate around $2.1 billion a year for coastal communities. The whaling fleet is expected to set sail for Antarctica in the next few weeks. The militant conservationist group Sea Shepherd plans to take every measure to thwart the hunt. The Japan Times: Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012 ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Are We Heading Toward Peak Fertilizer?
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/11/are-we-heading-toward-peak-fertilizer Are We Heading Toward Peak Fertilizer? -By Tom Philpott Wed Nov. 28, 2012 You've heard of peak oil-the idea that the globe's easy-to-get-to petroleum reserves are largely cashed, and most of what's left is the hard stuff, buried in deep-sea deposits or tar sands. But what about peak phosphorus and potassium? These elements form two-thirds of the holy agricultural triumvirate of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (also known as NPK, from their respective markers in the periodic table). These nutrients, which are essential for plants to grow, are extracted from soil every time we harvest crops, and have to be replaced if farmland is to remain productive. For most of agricultural history, successful farming has been about figuring out how to recycle these elements (although no one had identified them until the 19th century). That meant returning food waste, animal waste, and in some cases, human waste to the soil. Early in the 20th century, we learned to mass produce N, P, and K-giving rise to the modern concept of fertilizer, and what's now known as industrial agriculture. The N in NPK, nitrogen, can literally be synthesized from thin air, through a process developed in the early 20th century by the German chemist Fritz Haber. Our reliance on synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (as its known) carries its own vast array of problems-not least of which that making it requires an enormous amount of fossil energy. (I examined the dilemmas of synthetic N in a 2011 series at Grist.) But phosphorus and potassium cannot be synthesized-they're found in significant amounts only in a few large deposits scattered across the planet, in the form, respectively, of phosphate rock and potash. After less than a century of industrial ag, we're starting to burn through them. In a column in the November 14 Nature, the legendary investor Jeremy Grantham lays out why that's a problem: These two elements cannot be made, cannot be substituted, are necessary to grow all life forms, and are mined and depleted. It's a scary set of statements. Former Soviet states and Canada have more than 70% of the potash. Morocco has 85% of all high-grade phosphates. It is the most important quasi-monopoly in economic history. What happens when these fertilizers run out is a question I can't get satisfactorily answered and, believe me, I have tried. There seems to be only one conclusion: their use must be drastically reduced in the next 20-40 years or we will begin to starve. Why listen to this guy? Grantham, cofounder and chief strategist for the Boston firm Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo, has avoided or at least foreseen every bubble from the Japanese equity/real estate craze of the '80s right up to our own real estate mania of the 2000s. Back in fall 2007, with the SP 500 near all-time highs and months before the Bear Stearns nosedive, Grantham was publicly foretelling financial gloom and doom. Grantham is also known for his real talk on climate change. The Nature piece I quoted focuses on that topic, and advises scientists to be arrested (if necessary), in order to inspire policy action on the climate crisis. And in a characteristically blunt November letter to his firm's investors, Grantham argued that we should not unnecessarily ruin a pleasant and currently very serviceable planet just to maximize the short-term proÞts of energy companies and others. That's more clearly stated than you'll get from any high-profile Democratic pol-and this from a financial titan, no less. So, given his record of prescience and gift for getting to the heart of the matter, we should probably listen to Grantham when he says that our agricultural system is lurching toward collapse. Of the two key fertilizers Grantham warns about, phosphorus is the more urgent. As Grantham notes, our friendly neighbor Canada sits on a vast potash stash. But phosphate rock is largely concentrated in Morocco-and not just anywhere in Morocco. It's in the country's Western Sahara region, on highly disputed land. In a superb 2011 piece in Yale Environment 360, the environmental writer Fred Pearce explained: The Western Sahara is an occupied territory. In 1976, when Spanish colonialists left, its neighbor Morocco invaded, and has held it ever since. Most observers believe the vast phosphate deposits were the major reason that Morocco took an interest. Whatever the truth, the Polisario Front, a rebel movement the UN recognizes as the rightful representatives of the territory, would like it back. Given that a savvy investor like Grantham calls Morocco's phosphate holdings the most important quasi-monopoly in economic history, you can bet that the Polisario Front isn't going to let the Moroccan government control it without a fight. In other words, a scarce mineral key to the future of industrial agriculture is concentrated on
[Biofuel] COP18: Permafrost Melts While Government Negotiations Stall
Canada, The Surprise 'Pariah' of the Kyoto Protocol Some Canadians doubt whether their country should have any say in negotiating the second Kyoto protocol after it became the only nation to reject the first one by Isabeau Doucet Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 by The Guardian/UK http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/27-12 As the world grows warmer, concern cools down By MICHAEL RICHARDSON The Japan Times: Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012 http://www.japantimes.co.jp/print/eo20121128mr.html The Climate Fiscal Cliff by Mijin Cha Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 by Policy Shop / Demos Blog http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/27-0 --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/11/27-6 Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 by Common Dreams COP18: Permafrost Melts While Government Negotiations Stall Rich nations do nothing while permafrost melt increases emissions by 39% - Common Dreams staff Scientists report that significant thawing of the Arctic permafrost will significantly amplify global warming, says a new UN report released Tuesday, which many hope will spur some agreement and action on the second day of negotiations underway at the 18th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP18). Permafrost emissions could ultimately account for up to 39 percent of total emissions, said the report's lead author and COP18 presenter, Kevin Schaefer. This must be factored in to treaty negotiations expected to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Rising global temperatures are increasingly softening the hard-packed earth, which covers nearly a quarter of the northern hemisphere. As stated by UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner, Permafrost is one of the keys to the planet's future because it contains large stores of frozen organic matter that, if thawed and released into the atmosphere, would amplify current global warming and propel us to a warmer world. The permafrost carbon feedback is irreversible on human time scales, states the report, Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost, which estimates that the methane seeping from the thawing Arctic will eventually add more to emissions than last year's combined carbon output of the US and Europe. This sobering report was announced on the second day of the UN's Climate Change Conference in Doha, Qatar. Thus far, the focus of the negotiations has been on extending the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire this year, to at least 2020. At the climate talks on Tuesday, the Associated Press reports, a number of wealthy nations including Japan, Russia and Canada have joined the ranks of the U.S.-which never agreed to the original pact-and refused to endorse the extension, reducing sole remaining backers to the European Union and Australia and several smaller countries, which together account for less than 15 percent of global emissions. Despite continual reports indicating the increasing urgency of our climate situation, U.S. deputy climate envoy Jonathan Pershing said in a press conference that President Barack Obama was sticking with the 2009 goal of cutting emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, adding, I do not anticipate that the United States will modify the commitment we have made. Pershing went on to defend the U.S.'s climate record adding, Those who don't know what the US is doing may not be informed of the scale and extent of the effort, but it's enormous. According to The Guardian, the senior climate representative was referring to the carbon reductions attributed to the widespread adoption of shale gas which is extracted by means of 'fracking,' the effects of which are manifold including the contamination of precious groundwater resources. In an open letter to governments and their negotiators, 350.org leaders Bill McKibben, Nnimmo Bassey and Pablo Solon write: Without dramatic global action to change our path--the end of the climate story is already written. There is no room for doubt--absent remarkable action, these fossil fuels will burn, and the temperature will climb creating a chain reaction of climate related natural disasters. Negotiators should cease their face-saving, their endless bracketing and last minute cooking of texts and concentrate entirely on figuring out how to live within the carbon budget scientists set. We can't emit more than 565 more gigatons of carbon before 2050, but at the current pace we'll blow past that level in 15 years. If we want to have a chance to stick to this budget by 2020 we can't send to the atmosphere more than 200 gigatons. The letter goes on to echo the argument by developing countries, who are most at risk from global temperature increases, that it is vital that developed nations lead the way towards a new worldwide accord. As stated by Andre Correa do Lago, director general for Environment and Special Affairs in the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affair, who is heading the Brazilian delegation at the
[Biofuel] A Grand Bargain is a Grand Betrayal: The Forgotten, Lonely World of Facts
Goldman Sachs' Global Coup D'etat Tuesday, 27 November 2012 16:07 By Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks, The Daily Take | Op-Ed http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12996-goldman-sachs-global-coup-de-tat Paul Krugman: Beyond Fiscal Cliff, an Austerity Bomb Tuesday, 27 November 2012 10:12 http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/12974-beyond-fiscal-cliff-an-austerity-bomb The fiscal cliff is a lie Only the rich win in a grand bargain on taxes and entitlements. We can afford Social Security, and should expand it BY MICHAEL LIND TUESDAY, NOV 27, 2012 03:44 PM SAST http://www.salon.com/2012/11/27/the_fiscal_cliff_is_a_lie/ --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/27-5 Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 by Al Jazeera A Grand Bargain is a Grand Betrayal: The Forgotten, Lonely World of Facts That the United States is center-right and Obama needs compromise on slashing the welfare state is a myth by Paul Rosenberg Facts are stupid things, Ronald Reagan once said, hilariously misquoting Founding Father John Adams, your typical elitist Enlightenment intellectual, who actually said, Facts are stubborn things, and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. But in the contest between the real world of John Adams and the fantasy world bequeathed to us by Ronald Reagan, stupid and stubborn are on both on the side of the latter... and the latter is winning, hands down, as can be seen in President Obama's pursuit of a so-called grand bargain that would cut far more in spending than it would raise in taxes. In the Reaganite fantasy world of Washington DC, Obama represents the left. In the real world? Well, take a look for yourself. There is a political party in the United States whose presidential candidate got over 60 million votes, and whose members - according to the General Social Survey - overwhelmingly think we're spending too little on Social Security, rather than spending too much, by a lopsided margin of 52-12. The party, of course, is the Republican Party. There is as an ideological label claimed by over 100 million Americans, who collectively think we're spending too little on improving and protecting the nation's health, rather than spending too much, by a 2-1 margin: 48-24. The labelled ideology, of course, is conservative. Combine the two categories and the two spending questions, and you find that a 51.4 percent of conservative Republicans think we're spending too little on either Social Security, health care or both. Only 28.7 percent think we're spending too much, and just 7.3 percent think we're spending too much on both. That's 7.3 percent of conservative Republicans in support of the position taken by leaders of both political parties - Republicans, who want to slash the welfare state drastically while making permanent tax cuts for the rich, and Democrats, led by President Obama, who wants a more balanced approach, with $2.50 cut from spending for every $1 added in taxes. Other Democrats, particularly in Congress, are trying to push back against Obama, without letting their slips show, and Obama is doing his best to hide what he's up to, but there is simply no way to get $4 trillion in cuts - almost $1 trillion already agreed to and another $3 trillion in his current proposal - without deep spending cuts that even a majority of conservative Republicans oppose. Yet, as the Guardian reports, Obama's grassroots campaign organization is being kept alive after the campaign, and pushing this far right agenda is their first emailed call to action. It's now clear that ordinary citizens will also be subjected to a full bore messaging campaign to persuade them that they should regard this counterproductive sacrifice as good for them, notes leading econoblogger Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism. She also notes, correctly, that most Americans have a simple response to the notion of 'reforming' these popular programs: Cut military budgets and raise taxes on upper income groups. Something we can all agree on The figures cited above come from the General Social Survey of 2010. The GSS is the gold standard of public opinion research in the United States. Social scientists reference it more often than any other data source except for the US Census. The GSS has been asking these same questions since the 1970s, with similar ones added to its list over time. The responses to those questions reveal a much broader truth - the American people like the various different functions of the welfare state, regardless of their political ideology or affiliation. They like spending on highways, roads and bridges, mass transportation, education, child care, urban problems, alternative energy, you name it. For example, in 2010, if we combine six questions - adding education, mass transit, highways and bridges, and urban problems to Social Security and health care - then the
[Biofuel] Israeli Terror: The Final Solution to the Palestine Question
Britain ready to back Palestinian statehood at UN Mahmoud Abbas pledge not to pursue Israel for war crimes and resumption of peace talks are UK conditions Ian Black, Middle East editor guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 November 2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/uk-ready-to-back-palestine-statehood Israeli Assault on Gaza is Murder, Not Defense by Mairead Maguire Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 by Common Dreams http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/27-10 --0-- http://www.globalresearch.ca/israeli-terror-the-final-solution-to-the-palestine-question/5313258 Israeli Terror: The Final Solution to the Palestine Question By Prof. James Petras Global Research, November 28, 2012 Introduction For the past forty-five years the state of Israel has been dispossessing millions of Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, confiscating their lands, destroying homes, bulldozing orchards and setting-up 'Jews-only' colonial settlements serviced by highways, electrical systems and water works for the exclusive use of the settlers and occupying soldiers. The process of Israeli territorial expansion throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem has greatly accelerated in recent years, converting Palestinian-held territory into non-viable isolated enclaves - like South Africa's Bantustans - surrounded by the Israeli soldiers who protect violent settler-vigilantes as they assault and harass Palestinian farmers at work in their fields, beat Arab children on their way to school, pelt Palestinian housewives as they hang their laundry and then invade and defecate in Palestinian mosques and churches. The Rage and Rape of Gaza and its Apologists Israel's strategic goal is to impose 'Greater Israel' on the region: to take over all of historical Palestine, expell the entire non-Jewish population and subsidize 'Jews-only' settlements (for settler-immigrants, often from the US and former USSR). While bulldozers and tanks have dispossessed Palestinians in the West Bank for decades, the launching of thousands of missiles and bombs have become the 'weapons of choice' for uprooting and eliminating the Palestinians in Gaza. In just eight days, Israel's latest blitzkrieg resulted in the killing of 168 Palestinians (42 children and 100 civilians), the wounding of 1,235, the destruction of over 1,350 buildings and the further traumatizing of over 1.7 million children, women and men fenced in the world's largest concentration camp. According to the Israeli Defense Minister, the Jewish State dropped a thousand times more bombs onto Gaza than the Palestinians fired back into Israel. The current Israeli offensive began with the gruesome assassination of a prominent Hamas leader, Ahmed Jabari, and immediately escalated into an assault on the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. Secure in the knowledge that the Palestinians had no capacity to retaliate with similar weaponry, the Israeli High Command ordered the systematic destruction of civilian life, workplaces and densely populated neighborhoods. Over 75% of the casualties have been non-combatants; almost half are children, women and elders. The Israeli propaganda machine and its 'Fifth Column' in the US fabricated and repeated the Big Lie: that the Jewish state was 'defending itself' Right with only six (mostly military) deaths and 280 wounded (the majority non-threatening) versus the nearly 200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, slaughtered. The US Zionist power configuration (ZPC), embedded in the policy centers of the US Executive, the Congress and both political parties, parroted this line. All the major US TV networks and print media reproduced verbatim Israeli Foreign Office press handouts about Israel 's 'defensive' genocide while entire Palestinian families were being buried under the rubble of their bombed apartments. Death and destruction, planned and executed with the unanimous support of all the major Israeli political parties and leaders, enthralled the mass of its Jewish citizens: Indeed, over 80% of Israeli Jews supported the terror blitz against Gaza. As the Russian media outlet (RT) reported: A new wave of hatred towards Palestinians is sweeping through Israel from public figures to the man (person) in the street. The Israeli Interior Minister declared that Gaza should be bombed into the Middle Ages. Israeli demonstrators in Tel Aviv shouted; they (the Palestinians) don't deserve to live, they must die, may your children die and now we must go back there (to Gaza) and kick out all Arabs. The prominent Israeli Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, the son of a former chief rabbi, made a speech in the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron where he blessed the Israeli soldiers and urged them to slaughter their enemy. Even more to the point, Israel Katz, Israel 's Transport Minister, demanded Gaza be bombed so hard the population will have to flee into Egypt (the Sinai desert).
[Biofuel] Chinese journalist arrested for reporting homeless children's deaths
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/chin-n28.shtml Chinese journalist arrested for reporting homeless children's deaths By Oliver Campbell 28 November 2012 Li Yuanlong, the journalist who broke the story of five homeless children being found dead in an industrial rubbish bin in Bijie, in China's south-western province of Guizhou, has reportedly been sent on a forced vacation. The children apparently died of carbon monoxide poisoning after lighting a coal fire to stay warm in the bin in which they were sleeping. Their deaths quickly became the focal point of popular hostility to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime. Bijie is a centre of coal mining, known for its high levels of poverty. The incident, along with criticism of the authorities, featured prominently on social media sites and blogs. (See: China: Homeless children found dead in rubbish bin http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/chin-n24.shtml). Li Yuanlong's reports, which were then followed up in the mainstream media, have thus become something of a political problem for the CCP regime. Li's son, Li Muzi told the South China Morning Post his father had been taken by authorities at 1 p.m. on November 21 to Guiyang airport. Li Muzi said his father was put on a plane, and sent on a holiday to a tourist destination that he did not want to reveal. State Security Bureau agents routinely use this kind of forced holiday against dissidents. The victims are locked up in secret detention locations, in order to intimidate and even physically abuse them. Li Muzi, who is a student in the US, and regularly communicates with his father by email and phone, explained: My father told me he received several phone calls before he was taken from home Apparently they [the Chinese authorities] are trying to prevent him from helping other reporters follow up on the incident. Li Fangping, a lawyer and friend of Li Yuanlong, indicated that he spoke to the journalist by phone, while Li was being driven along a highway to a resort somewhere in Guizhou. Reports indicate that Li's wife was also sent away. In the South China Morning Post article, Li's son said his father had asked him to remove a blog posting about the deaths of the homeless children, in the hope that it may shorten the forced vacation. This is not the first time that Li Yuanlong has faced punishment as a result of his investigative journalism. He had worked as a reporter for the Bijie Daily, the main newspaper in the city. In 2005, he was sacked by the paper, and imprisoned for two years, for writing too many negative stories, especially on rural poverty. Li told his lawyer at the time: I write lies and clichés all day and I feel repressed. I want to be able to say what I think... The reality inside China is about inequality of wealth, corruption of officials, unjust administration of law, restriction of speech, etc... As an intellectual, I have the obligation to criticise and expose these phenomena. He was charged with inciting subversion of state power. Since being released from the jail, he has been unemployed, but has posted investigative stories on an online Chinese language news site. Li's arrest is a sharp warning that the new CCP leadership under Xi Jinping, installed at its recent 18th congress, will be just as ruthless in suppressing political opposition as its predecessors. The congress laid down an agenda of launching a social onslaught against the conditions of working people by further opening up the Chinese economy to international capital, inevitably widening the gulf between rich and poor. The tragic plight of the children, whose parents were migrant workers, has resonated with broad layers of the Chinese population, increasingly concerned by growing social inequality and the CCP regime's failure to address the social problems confronting ordinary people. Official figures from 2008 estimated that there were between 1 and 1.5 million children living without parental supervision in China. According to Caixing, the country's leading business newspaper, however, there could be as many as 58 million left behind children. The attempt to censor Li appears to be part of a broader crackdown on dissent. Zhai Xiaobing, a worker in the financial sector, was arrested on November 7 by Beijing police, apparently for a cryptic tweet he posted about the CCP congress. Twitter is blocked by China's Internet police, but it is estimated that around 35 million people in China access the site, using proxy servers and virtual private networks. Zhai's tweet about the CCP congress read in part: The Great Hall of the People suddenly collapses, only seven of more than 2,000 people inside survive. Later, one-by-one the survivors die in strange ways. It seems that the tweet was referring to the horror film Final Destination, using it as an analogy for the destabilising factional warfare that developed within the CCP
Re: [Biofuel] Anti-nuclear madness doesn't jibe with concern about global warming
Thanks much, all. I didn't post this piece because I thought it was a great article. It's a common argument, and you've given it a thorough debunking, well done. As Daryl says, one can usually expect better of Dyer, though I recall a previous screw-up in a piece he wrote about India, which the list duly shredded, with the final comment that Mr Dyer doesn't know much about India. It's still too early for Japanese people to start dying because of the Fukushima meltdown, no doubt that'll change (several Tepco workers have already died). The whole disaster, apart from the tsunami itself, is a shining example of official malfeasance, dissembly, obfuscation, cover-ups, and staggering ineptitude (which left schoolkids playing in radioactive playgrounds, etc etc etc). It's the essential sideshow to the upcoming Japanese elections. Some of the political parties don't seem to think so, but the electorate certainly does, with huge cynicism of TPTB and all who sail in her. Loony right-winger Ishihara wants more nukes, including bombs... And there seem to be elements in equally loony Israel who seriously want to use them. And, I think, in the US too, and elsewhere. Gawd. I don't think we have any of Dyer's prattling Greens here, but I can't altogether deny his accusation of superstitious fears. Nukes give me the creeps, I don't want them on the same planet as me, I think the Big Nuke in the Sky that rises in the morning and sets in the evening is a perfectly adequate solution, and anything further is a lot worse than superfluous. Twenty years or so ago I watched a BBC news piece on an ebola outbreak in the Congo, with a WHO team going into a village to investigate. Everybody in the village was dead. The WHO guys were wearing very impressive gear, total protection from the outside environment, but I suddenly got The Fear, as if an ebola virus was somehow going to swoop out of the TV screen into my living-room and get me. Superstitious, yeah. It's just what I feel about nukes, with the one difference that there's a place on the planet for ebola. But not for nukes. It doesn't depend on mere feelings and superstition as Dyer implies. There's ample fact and reason to support it, unless you're thinking risk-assessment rather than precautionary principle. What facts and reason say is that nukes are not an appropriate subject for a risk-assessment approach. Best Keith Dyer was **so*obviously** hacking for the nuke industry on this one. the piece is so riddled with industry distortions and and falsehoods, either he (or the nuke PR guy who wrote it for him) must have been making progressive commission on a per-deviation-from-the-truth basis. Seriously, seriously twisted and slanted. And that's just in dealing with the facts. Never mind the dismissive and derisive tone with which he talks about 'the Greens.' His assertion that 'Greens' fail to understand that nuke plants aren't thermonuclear weapons, is freaking laughable. Someone needs to ask him what is his position on the war on terror and civil liberties, in particular, with respect to dirty bombs.` Anyway, Darryl makes good points re life-cycle emissions. Furthermore, nuclear has a life-cycle ranging from thousands of years to millions of years, depending on the isotope. So not only do we not know how much energy it will take to safely store it, we have already accumulated many thousands of tons of this stuff without even coming to terms with the fact that planning on such a timescale is essentially impossible. In other words, 'safe storage' is a purely theoretical notion, in practice unattainable. But the point is that it isn't, and doesn't have to be, a choice between two negatives. It will be so if we fail to collectively act. And I really do mean We. So far, we've been brought to this point by the decisions of a few. Not so much against our will, strictly speaking (in the U.S., at least), but certainly by being kept in the dark about the alternatives; about the very fact that there were alternatives, even. This is not the case anymore. The information is out there, but unfortunately there are still too many of us who are not engaging, either out of low morale or the idea that professional and/or social standing will be put at risk. This of course is ridiculous, because those are going to be at risk either way. So start with the small easy stuff and go from there. Try reaching out in your community to start a conversation about what can be done. A lot of people may reject the idea, but there are those who won't. Believe me, they're out there. On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 10:20 AM, Darryl McMahon dar...@econogics.comwrote: Jason, I disagree. I usually expect better of Gwyn Dyer, but I think he missed the mark on this one. Assuming that nuclear generation can only be replaced by fossil fuels in the medium to long term is a relic of a 'hard path' mindset. Shifting to fossil fuels in the short
[Biofuel] A Thermonuclear Energy Bomb in Christmas Wrappings
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/print/ed20121128a1.html EDITORIAL New global energy picture A new report hails a crucial shift in the global economy. If current trends continue, the United States will surpass Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2020. This development will not only transform the world's energy picture, but geopolitics as well. --0-- http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/27-6 Published on Tuesday, November 27, 2012 by TomDispatch.com A Thermonuclear Energy Bomb in Christmas Wrappings World Energy Report 2012: The Good, the Bad, and the Really, Truly Ugly by Michael T. Klare Rarely does the release of a data-driven report on energy trends trigger front-page headlines around the world. That, however, is exactly what happened on November 12th when the prestigious Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA http://www.iea.org/) released this year's edition of its World Energy Outlook. In the process, just about everyone missed its real news, which should have set off alarm bells across the planet. Claiming that advances in drilling technology were producing an upsurge in North American energy output, World Energy Outlook predicted that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the planet's leading oil producer by 2020. North America is at the forefront of a sweeping transformation in oil and gas production that will affect all regions of the world, declared IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven in a widely quoted statement. In the U.S., the prediction of imminent supremacy in the oil-output sweepstakes was generally greeted with unabashed jubilation. This is a remarkable change, said John Larson of IHS, a corporate research firm. It's truly transformative. It's fundamentally changing the energy outlook for this country. Not only will this result in a diminished reliance on imported oil, he indicated, but also generate vast numbers of new jobs. This is about jobs. You know, it's about blue-collar jobs. These are good jobs. The editors of the Wall Street Journal were no less ecstatic. In an editorial with the eye-catching headline Saudi America, they lauded U.S. energy companies for bringing about a technological revolution, largely based on the utilization of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to extract oil and gas from shale rock. That, they claimed, was what made a new mega-energy boom possible. This is a real energy revolution, the Journal noted, even if it's far from the renewable energy dreamland of so many government subsidies and mandates. Other commentaries were similarly focused on the U.S. outpacing Saudi Arabia and Russia, even if some questioned whether the benefits would be as great as advertised or obtainable at an acceptable cost to the environment. While agreeing that the expected spurt in U.S. production is mostly good news, Michael A. Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations warned that gas prices will not drop significantly because oil is a global commodity and those prices are largely set by international market forces. [T]he U.S. may be slightly more protected, but it doesn't give you the energy independence some people claim, he told the New York Times. Some observers focused on whether increased output and job creation could possibly outweigh the harm that the exploitation of extreme energy resources like fracked oil or Canadian tar sands was sure to do to the environment. Daniel J. Weiss of the Center for American Progress, for example, warned of a growing threat to America's water supply from poorly regulated fracking operations. In addition, oil companies want to open up areas off the northern coast of Alaska in the Arctic Ocean, where they are not prepared to address a major oil blowout or spill like we had in the Gulf of Mexico. Such a focus certainly offered a timely reminder of how important oil remains to the American economy (and political culture), but it stole attention away from other aspects of the World Energy Report that were, in some cases, downright scary. Its portrait of our global energy future should have dampened enthusiasm everywhere, focusing as it did on an uncertain future energy supply, excessive reliance on fossil fuels, inadequate investment in renewables, and an increasingly hot, erratic, and dangerous climate. Here are some of the most worrisome takeaways from the report. Shrinking World Oil Supply Given the hullabaloo about rising energy production in the U.S., you would think that the IEA report was loaded with good news about the world's future oil supply. No such luck. In fact, on a close reading anyone who has the slightest familiarity with world oil dynamics should shudder, as its overall emphasis is on decline and uncertainty. Take U.S. oil production surpassing Saudi Arabia's and Russia's. Sounds great, doesn't it? Here's the catch: previous editions of the IEA report and the
Re: [Biofuel] Anti-nuclear madness doesn't jibe with concern about global warming
Hi, Keith. Thanks much, all. I didn't post this piece because I thought it was a great article. I, for one, certainly did not think that was why you posted it (and I doubt anyone else did, either). Apologies if it seemed that way. As Daryl says, one can usually expect better of Dyer. . . Dyer is an unknown to me as this is the first i've seen of him. Not a very auspicious introduction. But between you and Darryl getting his back, so to speak, i'll have to try and withhold judgement. But i will say, it is terribly, terribly, extremely hard to read that piece and not conclude that he was (to put it mildly) not really being above board. ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
