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Some reading for the “anti-warmalists” and “climate-change deniers”

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Kiwithrottlejockey
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« Reply #275 on: August 23, 2013, 04:24:31 pm »


From the Los Angeles Times....

Climate change deniers live in ignorant bliss as seas keep rising

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM - Thursday, August 22, 2013



A NEW climate-change report from the United Nations that was leaked to the media this week says sea levels could rise by more than 3 feet by the end of the 21st century and that there is a 95% likelihood that the global warming that is causing this rise is largely a result of human activity. You may now cue the deniers who say somebody is just making this stuff up.

In this case, that somebody is the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC), an international scientific team that issues periodic assessments of our planet’s shifting climate. Its report, which is still under review, is scheduled for release in four parts between September 2013 and November 2014. Just like a slew of other scientific studies, it warns that major coastal cities, including New York, Miami, New Orleans, London, Shanghai and Sydney, are in peril of being inundated by the rising seas.  And, like those numerous other reports, it says dramatically increased levels of carbon dioxide produced by industrial activity and the burning of fossil fuels are likely to lead to extreme heat waves, widespread melting of polar and glacial ice, drought, crop failures and extinction of many plants and animals.

As dire as this sounds, there are already those who complain the new report, like previous IPCC assessments, understates the problem. In an interview with the Huffington Post, the director of Penn State University’s Earth System Science Center, Michael Mann, said the sea level rise might actually reach 6 feet by 2100.

"This fits a pattern of the IPCC tending to err on the side of conservative, in part — I believe — because of fear of being attacked by the climate change denial machine," Mann said.

And, of course, that denial machine is always humming. On Monday, one of the U.S. Senate’s most vociferous climate change deniers, Senator James M. Inhofe (Republican-Oklahoma), was on Mike Huckabee’s radio show sharing misinformation with the host. The conservative pair traded a series of bogus claims that purported to prove there was nothing to worry about when it comes to increasing global temperatures.

Oddly, former-Arkansas Governor Huckabee was once a climate change believer who backed a cap-and-trade plan for industry to cut CO2 emissions. Then, of course, Huckabee decided to go after the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and had to dispense with scientific knowledge in favor of the right-wing magical thinking that pervades the base of the Republican Party.

Ah, to be a conservative climate change denier. While real scientists must do all the research and engage in heated debates about just how bad things are going to be, the deniers can rest easy in the bliss of willful ignorance.


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-climate-change-deniers-20130821,0,6254618.story
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« Reply #276 on: September 28, 2013, 12:02:09 pm »


Climate panel: warming ‘extremely likely’ man-made

The New Zealand Herald | 10:32PM - Friday, September 27, 2013

Global warming is likely to be man-made, says a scientific panel.
Global warming is likely to be man-made, says a scientific panel.

SCIENTISTS can now say with extreme confidence that human activity is the dominant cause of the global warming observed since the 1950s, a new report by an international scientific group said today.

Calling man-made warming "extremely likely," the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change used the strongest words yet on the issue as it adopted its assessment on the state of the climate system.

In its previous assessment, in 2007, the UN-sponsored panel said it was "very likely" that global warming was man-made.

One of the most controversial subjects in the report was how to deal with a purported slowdown in warming in the past 15 years. Climate skeptics say this "hiatus" casts doubt on the scientific consensus on climate change.

Many governments had objections over how the issue was treated in earlier drafts and some had called for it to be deleted altogether.

In the end, the IPCC made only a brief mention of the issue in the summary for policymakers, stressing that short-term records are sensitive to natural variability and don't in general reflect long-term trends.

"An old rule says that climate-relevant trends should not be calculated for periods less than around 30 years," said Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the group that wrote the report.

Many scientists say the purported slowdown reflects random climate fluctuations and an unusually hot year, 1998, picked as a starting point for charting temperatures. Another leading hypothesis is that heat is settling temporarily in the oceans, but that wasn't included in the summary.

Stocker said there wasn't enough literature on "this emerging question".

The IPCC said the evidence of climate change has grown thanks to more and better observations, a clearer understanding of the climate system and improved models to analyze the impact of rising temperatures.

"Our assessment of the science finds that the atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, the global mean sea level has risen and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased," said Qin Dahe, co-chair of the working group that wrote the report.

The full 2,000-page report isn't going to be released until Monday, but the summary for policymakers with the key findings was published Friday. It contained few surprises as many of the findings had been leaked in advance.

As expected, the IPCC raised its projections of the rise in sea levels to 10-32 inches (26-82cm) by the end of the century. The previous report predicted a rise of 7-23 inches (18-59cm).

The IPCC assessments are important because they form the scientific basis of U.N. negotiations on a new climate deal. Governments are supposed to finish that agreement in 2015, but it's unclear whether they will commit to the emissions cuts that scientists say will be necessary to keep the temperature below a limit at which the worst effects of climate change can be avoided.

Using four scenarios with different emissions controls, the report projected that global average temperatures would rise by 0.3°C to 4.8°C by the end of the century.

Only the two lower scenarios, which were based on significant cuts in CO2 emissions, came in below the 2°C limit that countries have set as their target in the climate talks to avoid the worst impacts of warming.

"This is yet another wakeup call: Those who deny the science or choose excuses over action are playing with fire," US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement. "Once again, the science grows clearer, the case grows more compelling, and the costs of inaction grow beyond anything that anyone with conscience or common sense should be willing to even contemplate."

At this point, emissions keep rising mainly due to rapid growth in China and other emerging economies. They say rich countries should take the lead on emissions cuts because they've pumped carbon into the atmosphere for longer.

Climate activists said the report should spur governments to action.

"There are few surprises in this report but the increase in the confidence around many observations just validates what we are seeing happening around us," said Samantha Smith, of the World Wildlife Fund.


http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11131126
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« Reply #277 on: September 28, 2013, 12:41:54 pm »

Yes - Yes.... We know and understand.  Salaries, stipends and grants depend on this!

They have been scurrying round like mice in a cheese factory, all trying to figure out how to blame a drop in temperature on warming!  Roll Eyes
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« Reply #278 on: October 02, 2013, 07:00:49 pm »


From the Los Angeles Times....

Yosemite's largest ice mass is melting fast

Lyell Glacier has shrunk 62% over the past century and hasn't moved in years.
It's a key source of water in the park, and scientists say it will be gone in 20 years.


By LOUIS SAHAGUN | 9:12PM - Tuesday, October 01, 2013

The photo on the left of Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park was taken by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1983; the one on the right was taken by park geologist Greg Stock in late September. — Photos: U.S. Geological Survey/Greg Stock.
The photo on the left of Lyell Glacier in Yosemite National Park was taken by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1983; the one on the right was taken by park
geologist Greg Stock in late September. — Photos: U.S. Geological Survey/Greg Stock.


CLIMATE CHANGE is taking a visible toll on Yosemite National Park, where the largest ice mass in the park is in a death spiral, geologists say.

During an annual trek to the glacier deep in Yosemite's backcountry last month, Greg Stock, the park's first full-time geologist, found that Lyell Glacier had shrunk visibly since his visit last year, continuing a trend that began more than a century ago.

Lyell has dropped 62% of its mass and lost 120 vertical feet of ice over the last 100 years. "We give it 20 years or so of existence — then it'll vanish, leaving behind rocky debris," Stock said.

The Sierra Nevada Mountains have roughly 100 remaining glaciers, two of them in Yosemite. The shrinkage of glaciers across the Sierra is also occurring around the world. Great ice sheets are dwindling, prompting concerns about what happens next to surrounding ecological systems after perennial rivulets of melted ice disappear.

"We've looked at glaciers in California, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington and elsewhere, and they're all thinning because of warming temperatures and less precipitation," said Andrew Fountain, professor of geology and geography at Portland State University in Oregon. "This is the beginning of the end of these things."

If carbon dioxide levels continue to rise, the earth will eventually become ice-free, according to a study by Ken MacLeod, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Missouri, published in the October issue of the journal Geology.

Research by scientists at NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey and UC Davis suggests that absorption of sunlight in snow by industrial air pollution including soot, or black carbon, is also causing snow and ice to melt faster.

Yosemite's other glacier, Maclure, is also shrinking, but it remains alive and continues to creep at a rate of about an inch a day.

Lyell, however, hasn't budged. It is the second largest glacier in the Sierra Nevada and the headwater of the Tuolumne River watershed, but it no longer fits the definition of a glacier because it has ceased moving.

"Lyell Glacier is stagnant — a clear sign it's dying," Stock said. "Our research indicates it stopped moving about a decade ago."

Of particular concern is the effect on Yosemite's Tuolumne Meadows. After two years of drought, many of the streams that nourish the picturesque meadowlands have gone dry. The one exception, however, is the Lyell Fork of the Tuolumne River, which is sustained by runoff from Lyell and Maclure glaciers.

"When the glaciers are gone, there will be no steady supplies of water in that drainage," Stock said. "We don't know what the impacts of that will be on plants and animals that evolved with these ice flows."

Future research projects will attempt to use climate shifts chronicled in the widths of tree rings in nearby forests to create computer models that will show the shrinkage of Yosemite's glaciers over the last 300 years — and help predict when they will disappear entirely.

Scientists also want to know why Lyell has stopped moving when neighboring Maclure, which is half the size it was a century ago, continues to advance at the same rate it did when naturalist John Muir and his friend Galen Clark hammered wooden stakes into its icy crust in 1872 to prove that glaciers are "living" because they move and alter the landscape as they do so.

"Glaciers tend to flow like honey down a plate, or slide over meltwater beneath them," Stock said. "We suspect Lyell just isn't thick enough anymore to drive a downhill motion."

Overall, "the rate of glacier retreat has accelerated since about 2000," Stock said. "Eventually, there'll be nothing left."

That's already happened at least once in Yosemite, geologists say. Black Mountain Glacier, which Muir discovered, surveyed and declared "living" in 1871, was gone by the mid-1980s.


http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-glaciers-20131002,0,7692754.story
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« Reply #279 on: October 02, 2013, 08:58:02 pm »

The photo on the left was actually taken in 1883, not 1983 but what's a century here or there?  Quite a lot actually, most of the world's glaciers have been in retreat for over a century since the little ice age ended.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lyle-Glacier-1883.jpg
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« Reply #280 on: November 12, 2013, 11:02:04 am »



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« Reply #281 on: November 13, 2013, 10:52:36 am »



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« Reply #282 on: November 15, 2013, 05:27:17 am »


From the Los Angeles Times....

Typhoon Haiyan's havoc will not impress climate change deniers

By DAVID HORSEY | 5:00AM PST - Thursday, November 14, 2013



TYPHOON HAIYAN, the monster storm that set a Hiroshima-level standard for natural devastation when it hit the Philippines on Friday, was so big that its spiral image laid over a map of the United States stretches nearly from sea to shining sea. With winds hitting sustained peaks of 195 mph and gusts up to 235 mph, it may well be the most powerful storm ever recorded.

And it is probably just the herald of many monster storms to come. As NBC News Science Editor Alan Boyle reports, “Experts say Typhoon Haiyan was about as strong as it could theoretically get when it swept through the Philippines, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. But intensity limits have been rising over decades past — and climate models suggest they will keep rising over the decades to come, with the potential for bigger and more devastating storms.”

The ominous effects of climate change are becoming more and more obvious with each new natural disaster. For years now, polar ice has been melting and glaciers have been receding, but those effects of rising global temperatures go on quietly, far from the centers of civilization. It’s easy to ignore the plight of polar bears far to the north; less easy to be inattentive when a storm knocks out the lights in Manhattan, floods the subways and wrecks New Jersey coastal towns, as happened a year ago with Superstorm Sandy.

Still, there are plenty of folks who not only remain in denial, they take affirmative action to force other people to pretend climate change is not real. Some of these people are lobbyists who block legislation that could force industries to change their methods and reduce the carbon emissions that help drive the warming phenomenon. Some are state legislators who ban even the mention of global warming and climate change in disaster plans.

Last summer, Republican lawmakers in North Carolina passed a bill to prevent the Coastal Resources Commission from taking climate change data into account when projecting future rates of increase in the sea level along the state’s low-lying coast. They were encouraged in this by real estate developers who do not want anything to get in the way of them building more houses in vulnerable areas that might be inundated by the Atlantic in years to come.

GOP legislators in other red-leaning states are also doing what they can to legislate denial, even as their constituents cope with an increase in floods, wildfires, tornadoes and drought that may be driven by more extreme weather patterns caused by climate change.

Even as the planet is getting less hospitable to human habitation, America’s political response is being skewed by people who — for reasons of religion, greed or plain stupidity — want to play make-believe. Neither more monster storms nor disappearing polar bears will make them face up to reality. Only voters can do that.


PHOTOS: Central Philippines devastated by Typhoon Haiyan

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-typhoon-haiyans-20131113,0,921020.story
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« Reply #283 on: November 20, 2013, 01:18:15 pm »


Michael Klare: A Climate Change-Fueled Revolution?

posted 4:38PM - Sunday, November 17, 2013 | TomDispatch.com

There’s a crossroads moment in our recent history that comes back to me whenever I think of our warming planet. (2013 is shaping up to be the seventh warmest year since records began to be kept in 1850. The 10 warmest years have all occured since 1998.) In the six months from July 1979 to January 1980, as Jimmy Carter’s one-term presidency was winding down, he urged two approaches to global energy on Americans. One was dismissed out of hand, the other taken up with alacrity — and our world is incommensurately the worse for it. Here’s a description I wrote back in May that is worth quoting again:

On July 15th, 1979, at a time when gas lines, sometimes blocks long, were a disturbing fixture of American life, President Jimmy Carter spoke directly to the American people on television for 32 minutes, calling for a concerted effort to end the country’s oil dependence on the Middle East. ‘To give us energy security’, he announced, ‘I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel — from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun’...

It’s true that, with the science of climate change then in its infancy, Carter wouldn’t have known about the possibility of an overheating world, and his vision of ‘alternative energy’ wasn’t exactly a fossil-fuel-free one. Even then — shades of today or possibly tomorrow — he was talking about having ‘more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias’. Still, it was a remarkably forward-looking speech.

Had we invested massively in alternative energy R&D back then, who knows where we might be today? Instead, the media dubbed it the ‘malaise speech,’ though the president never actually used that word, speaking instead of an American ‘crisis of confidence’. While the initial public reaction seemed positive, it didn’t last long. In the end, the president's energy proposals were essentially laughed out of the room and ignored for decades.

Carter would, however, make his mark on U.S. energy policy, just not quite in the way he had imagined. Six months later, on January 23, 1980, in his last State of the Union Address, he would proclaim what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine: ‘Let our position be absolutely clear’, he said. ‘An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force’.

No one would laugh him out of the room for that. Instead, the Pentagon would fatefully begin organizing itself to protect U.S. (and oil) interests in the Persian Gulf on a new scale and America’s oil wars would follow soon enough. Not long after that address, it would start building up a Rapid Deployment Force in the Gulf that would in the end become U.S. Central Command. More than three decades later, ironies abound: thanks in part to those oil wars, whole swaths of the energy-rich Middle East are in crisis, if not chaos, while the big energy companies have put time and money into a staggeringly fossil-fuel version of Carter’s ‘alternative’ North America. They’ve focused on shale oil, and on shale gas as well, and with new production methods, they are reputedly on the brink of turning the United States into a ‘new Saudi Arabia’.

Could there have been a sadder choice in recent history? If, in 1979, the U.S. had invested in a big way in solar, wind, tidal power, and who knows what else, imagine where we might be today. Imagine a world not facing a future in which storms like Super-Typhoon Haiyan, which recently leveled part of the Philippines, its winds devastating, its storm surge killing staggering numbers, threaten to become the norm for our children and grandchildren.

So oil wars, yes! — which meant transforming the Greater Middle East into a region of chaos, instability, and death. An oil-ravaged planet, yes indeed! — which meant potentially transforming a future version of Earth into a planet of chaos, instability, and death! A green energy revolution, not on your life! — not while the giant energy corporations have so much invested in underground reserves of fossil fuels and such gigantic profits to make, not while so many governments are deeply intertwined with those energy giants or are themselves essentially giant energy companies. No wonder TomDispatch regular Michael Klare suggests that it falls into our hands to ensure that a green energy revolution arrives ahead of a human-created, fossil-fueled apocalypse.


— Tom Engelhardt

______________________________________

Surviving Climate Change

Is a Green Energy Revolution on the Global Agenda?

By Michael T. Klare

A WEEK after the most powerful “super typhoon” ever recorded pummeled the Philippines, killing thousands in a single province, and three weeks after the northern Chinese city of Harbin suffered a devastating “airpocalypse”, suffocating the city with coal-plant pollution, government leaders beware! Although individual events like these cannot be attributed with absolute certainty to increased fossil fuel use and climate change, they are the type of disasters that, scientists tell us, will become a pervasive part of life on a planet being transformed by the massive consumption of carbon-based fuels. If, as is now the case, governments across the planet back an extension of the carbon age and ever increasing reliance on “unconventional” fossil fuels like tar sands and shale gas, we should all expect trouble. In fact, we should expect mass upheavals leading to a green energy revolution.

None of us can predict the future, but when it comes to a mass rebellion against the perpetrators of global destruction, we can see a glimmer of the coming upheaval in events of the present moment. Take a look and you will see that the assorted environmental protests that have long bedeviled politicians are gaining in strength and support. With an awareness of climate change growing and as intensifying floods, fires, droughts, and storms become an inescapable feature of daily life across the planet, more people are joining environmental groups and engaging in increasingly bold protest actions. Sooner or later, government leaders are likely to face multiple eruptions of mass public anger and may, in the end, be forced to make radical adjustments in energy policy or risk being swept aside.

In fact, it is possible to imagine such a green energy revolution erupting in one part of the world and spreading like wildfire to others. Because climate change is going to inflict increasingly severe harm on human populations, the impulse to rebel is only likely to gain in strength across the planet. While circumstances may vary, the ultimate goal of these uprisings will be to terminate the reign of fossil fuels while emphasizing investment in and reliance upon renewable forms of energy. And a success in any one location is bound to invite imitation in others.

A wave of serial eruptions of this sort would not be without precedent. In the early years of twentieth-first century, for example, one government after another in disparate parts of the former Soviet Union was swept away in what were called the “color revolutions” — populist upheavals against old-style authoritarian regimes. These included the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia (2003), the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine (2004), and the “Pink” or “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan (2005). In 2011, a similar wave of protests erupted in North Africa, culminating in what we call the Arab Spring.

Like these earlier upheavals, a “green revolution” is unlikely to arise from a highly structured political campaign with clearly identified leaders. In all likelihood, it will erupt spontaneously, after a cascade of climate-change induced disasters provokes an outpouring of public fury. Once ignited, however, it will undoubtedly ratchet up the pressure for governments to seek broad-ranging, systemic transformations of their energy and climate policies. In this sense, any such upheaval — whatever form it takes — will prove “revolutionary” by seeking policy shifts of such magnitude as to challenge the survival of incumbent governments or force them to enact measures with transformative implications.

Foreshadowings of such a process can already be found around the globe.  Take the mass environmental protests that erupted in Turkey this June. Though sparked by a far smaller concern than planetary devastation via climate change, for a time they actually posed a significant threat to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his governing party. Although his forces eventually succeeded in crushing the protests — leaving four dead, 8,000 injured, and 11 blinded by tear-gas canisters — his reputation as a moderate Islamist was badly damaged by the episode.

Like so many surprising upheavals on this planet, the Turkish uprising had the most modest of beginnings: on May 27th, a handful of environmental activists blocked bulldozers sent by the government to level Gezi Park, a tiny oasis of greenery in the heart of Istanbul, and prepare the way for the construction of an upscale mall. The government responded to this small-scale, non-violent action by sending in riot police and clearing the area, a move that enraged many Turks and prompted tens of thousands of them to occupy nearby Taksim Square. This move, in turn, led to an even more brutal police crackdown and then to huge demonstrations in Istanbul and around the country. In the end, mass protests erupted in 70 cities, the largest display of anti-government sentiment since Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002.

This was, in the most literal sense possible, a “green” revolution, ignited by the government’s assault on the last piece of greenery in central Istanbul. But once the police intervened in full strength, it became a wide-ranging rebuke to Erdogan’s authoritarian impulses and his drive to remake the city as a neo-Ottoman showplace — replete with fancy malls and high-priced condominiums — while eliminating poor neighborhoods and freewheeling public spaces like Taksim Square. “It’s all about superiority, and ruling over the people like sultans,” declared one protestor. It’s not just about the trees in Gezi Park, said another: “We are here to stand up against those who are trying to make a profit from our land.”


The Ningbo Rebellion

The same trajectory of events — a small-scale environmental protest evolving into a full-scale challenge to governmental authority — can be seen in other mass protests of recent years.

Take a Chinese example: in October 2012, students and middle class people joined with poor farmers to protest the construction of an $8.8 billion petrochemical facility in Ningbo, a city of 3.4 million people south of Shanghai. In a country where environmental pollution has reached nearly unprecedented levels, these protests were touched off by fears that the plant, to be built by the state-owned energy company Sinopec with local government support, would produce paraxylene, a toxic substance used in plastics, paints, and cleaning solvents.

Here, too, the initial spark that led to the protests was small-scale. On October 22nd, some 200 farmers obstructed a road near the district government’s office in an attempt to block the plant’s construction. After the police were called in to clear the blockade, students from nearby Ningbo University joined the protests. Using social media, the protestors quickly enlisted support from middle-class residents of the city who converged in their thousands on downtown Ningbo. When riot police moved in to break up the crowds, the protestors fought back, attacking police cars and throwing bricks and water bottles. While the police eventually gained the upper hand after several days of pitched battles, the Chinese government concluded that mass action of this sort, occurring in the heart of a major city and featuring an alliance of students, farmers, and young professionals, was too great a threat. After five days of fighting, the government gave in, announcing the cancellation of the petrochemical project.

The Ningbo demonstrations were hardly the first such upheavals to erupt in China. They did, however, highlight a growing governmental vulnerability to mass environmental protest. For decades, the reigning Chinese Communist Party has justified its monopolistic hold on power by citing its success in generating rapid economic growth. But that growth means the use of ever more fossil fuels and petrochemicals, which, in turn, means increased carbon emissions and disastrous atmospheric pollution, including one “airpocalypse” after another.

Until recently, most Chinese seemed to accept such conditions as the inevitable consequences of growth, but it seems that tolerance of environmental degradation is rapidly diminishing. As a result, the party finds itself in a terrible bind: it can slow development as a step toward cleaning up the environment, incurring a risk of growing economic discontent, or it can continue its growth-at-all-costs policy, and find itself embroiled in a firestorm of Ningbo-style environmental protests.

This dilemma — the environment versus the economy — has proven to be at the heart of similar mass eruptions elsewhere on the planet.


After Fukushima

Two of the largest protests of this sort were sparked by the reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants on March 11, 2011, after a massive tsunami struck northern Japan. In both of these actions — the first in Germany, the second in Japan — the future of nuclear power and the survival of governments were placed in doubt.

The biggest protests occurred in Germany. On March 26th, 15 days after the Fukushima explosions, an estimated 250,000 people participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations across the country — 100,000 in Berlin, and up to 40,000 each in Hamburg, Munich, and Cologne. “Today’s demonstrations are just the prelude to a new, strong, anti-nuclear movement,” declared Jochen Stay, a protest leader. “We’re not going to let up until the plants are finally mothballed.”

At issue was the fate of Germany’s remaining nuclear power plants. Although touted as an attractive alternative to fossil fuels, nuclear power is seen by most Germans as a dangerous and unwelcome energy option. Several months prior to Fukushima, German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted that Germany would keep its 17 operating reactors until 2040, allowing a smooth transition from the country’s historic reliance on coal to renewable energy for generating electricity. Immediately after Fukushima, she ordered a temporary shutdown of Germany’s seven oldest reactors for safety inspections but refused to close the others, provoking an outpouring of protest.

Witnessing the scale of the demonstrations, and after suffering an electoral defeat in the key state of Baden-Württemberg, Merkel evidently came to the conclusion that clinging to her position would be the equivalent of political suicide. On May 30th, she announced that the seven reactors undergoing inspections would be closed permanently and the remaining 10 would be phased out by 2022, almost 20 years earlier than in her original plan.

By all accounts, the decision to phase out nuclear power almost two decades early will have significant repercussions for the German economy. Shutting down the reactors and replacing them with wind and solar energy will cost an estimated $735 billion and take several decades, producing soaring electricity bills and periodic energy shortages. However, such is the strength of anti-nuclear sentiment in Germany that Merkel felt she had no choice but to close the reactors anyway.

The anti-nuclear protests in Japan occurred considerably later, but were no less momentous. On July 16th, 2012, 16 months after the Fukushima disaster, an estimated 170,000 people assembled in Tokyo to protest a government plan to restart the country’s nuclear reactors, idled after the disaster. This was not only Japan's largest antinuclear demonstration in many years, but the largest of any sort to occur in recent memory.

For the government, the July 16th action was particularly significant. Prior to Fukushima, most Japanese had embraced the country’s growing reliance on nuclear power, putting their trust in the government to ensure its safety. After Fukushima and the disastrous attempts of the reactors’ owner, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), to deal with the situation, public support for nuclear power plummeted. As it became increasingly evident that the government had mishandled the crisis, people lost faith in its ability to exercise effective control over the nuclear industry. Repeated promises that nuclear reactors could be made safe lost all credibility when it became known that government officials had long collaborated with TEPCO executives in covering up safety concerns at Fukushima and, once the meltdowns occurred, in concealing information about the true scale of the disaster and its medical implications.

The July 16th protest and others like it should be seen as a public vote against the government’s energy policy and oversight capabilities. “Japanese have not spoken out against the national government,” said one protestor, a 29-year-old homemaker who brought her one-year-old son. “Now, we have to speak out, or the government will endanger us all.”

Skepticism about the government, rare for twenty-first-century Japan, has proved a major obstacle to its desire to restart the country’s 50 idled reactors. While most Japanese oppose nuclear power, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe remains determined to get the rectors running again in order to reduce Japan’s heavy reliance on imported energy and promote economic growth. “I think it is impossible to promise zero [nuclear power plants] at this stage,” he declared this October. “From the government’s standpoint, [nuclear plants] are extremely important for a stable energy supply and economic activities.”

Despite such sentiments, Abe is finding it extremely difficult to garner support for his plans, and it is doubtful that significant numbers of those reactors will be coming online anytime soon.


The Explosions Ahead

What these episodes tell us is that people around the world are becoming ever more concerned about energy policy as it affects their lives and are prepared — often on short notice — to engage in mass protests. At the same time, governments globally, with rare exceptions, are deeply wedded to existing energy policies. These almost invariably turn them into targets, no matter what the original spark for mass opposition. As the results of climate change become ever more disruptive, government officials will find themselves repeatedly choosing between long-held energy plans and the possibility of losing their grip on power.

Because few governments are as yet prepared to launch the sorts of efforts that might even begin to effectively address the peril of climate change, they will increasingly be seen as obstacles to essential action and so as entities that need to be removed. In short, climate rebellion — spontaneous protests that may at any moment evolve into unquenchable mass movements — is on the horizon. Faced with such rebellions, recalcitrant governments will respond with some combination of accommodation to popular demands and harsh repression.

Many governments will be at risk from such developments, but the Chinese leadership appears to be especially vulnerable. The ruling party has staked its future viability on an endless carbon-fueled growth agenda that is steadily destroying the country’s environment. It has already faced half-a-dozen environmental upheavals like the one in Ningbo, and has responded to them by agreeing to protestors’ demands or by employing brute force. The question is: How long can this go on?

Environmental conditions are bound to worsen, especially as China continues to rely on coal for home heating and electrical power, and yet there is no indication that the ruling Communist Party is prepared to take the radical steps required to significantly reduce domestic coal consumption. This translates into the possibility of mass protests erupting at any time and on a potentially unprecedented scale. And these, in turn, could bring the Party’s very survival into question — a scenario guaranteed to produce immense anxiety among the country’s top leaders.

And what about the United States?  At this point, it would be ludicrous to say that, as a result of popular disturbances, the nation’s political leadership is at any risk of being swept away or even forced to take serious steps to scale back reliance on fossil fuels. There are, however, certainly signs of a growing nationwide campaign against aspects of fossil fuel reliance, including vigorous protests against hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

For environmental activist and writer Bill McKibben, all this adds up to an incipient mass movement against the continued consumption of fossil fuels. “In the last few years,” he has written, this movement “has blocked the construction of dozens of coal-fired power plants, fought the oil industry to a draw on the Keystone pipeline, convinced a wide swath of American institutions to divest themselves of their fossil fuel stocks, and challenged practices like mountaintop-removal coal mining and fracking for natural gas.” It may not have achieved the success of the drive for gay marriage, he observed, but it “continues to grow quickly, and it’s starting to claim some victories.”

If it’s still too early to gauge the future of this anti-carbon movement, it does seem, at least, to be gaining momentum. In the 2013 elections, for example, three cities in energy-rich Colorado — Boulder, Fort Collins, and Lafayette — voted to ban or place moratoriums on fracking within their boundaries, while protests against Keystone XL and similar projects are on the rise.

Nobody can say that a green energy revolution is a sure thing, but who can deny that energy-oriented environmental protests in the U.S. and elsewhere have the potential to expand into something far greater? Like China, the United States will experience genuine damage from climate change and its unwavering commitment to fossil fuels in the years ahead. Americans are not, for the most part, passive people. Expect them, like the Chinese, to respond to these perils with increased ire and a determination to alter government policy.

So don’t be surprised if that green energy revolution erupts in your neighborhood as part of humanity’s response to the greatest danger we’ve ever faced. If governments won’t take the lead on an imperiled planet, someone will.


______________________________________

• Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and conflict studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left.  A documentary movie version of his book Blood and Oil is available from the Media Education Foundation.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175773/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_a_climate_change-fueled_revolution
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« Reply #284 on: January 04, 2014, 06:35:11 pm »


From the Los Angeles Times....

Meagre Sierra snowpack is way below average

By BETTINA BOXALL | 4:51PM PST - Friday, January 03, 2014

Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources, left, walks over bare ground on the way to measuring the snowpack near Echo Summit in the Sierra Nevada. Statewide, the snowpack is just 20% of average for this time of year. — Photo: Steve Yeater/Associated Press.
Frank Gehrke, chief of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources, left, walks over bare ground on the way to measuring the snowpack
near Echo Summit in the Sierra Nevada. Statewide, the snowpack is just 20% of average for this time of year. — Photo: Steve Yeater/Associated Press.


THE signs aren’t good when the chief of California’s snow survey has to walk over bare ground to take a snowpack measurement in the Sierra Nevada, as Frank Gehrke did Friday near Echo Summit.

Manual and electronic readings up and down the range placed the statewide snowpack at 20% of normal for this date, adding to worries that 2014 could be a bad drought year.

The meager snowpack was not a surprise. Last year was California’s driest in 119 years of records, according to the Western Regional Climate Center in Reno.

Los Angeles and other cities around the state recorded their lowest precipitation amounts for a calendar year. The levels of key reservoirs have been dropping when they should be rising with winter rains.

Governor Jerry Brown has yet to declare a drought emergency. But last month the state Department of Water Resources formed a drought management team.

“While we hope conditions improve, we are fully mobilized to streamline water transfers and take every action possible to ease the effects of dry weather on farms, homes and businesses as we face a possible third consecutive dry year,” department director Mark Cowin said in a statement. “Every Californian can help by making water conservation a daily habit.”

Storage in Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, the two largest reservoirs in the state, is 57% of average for the date. Several other major reservoirs are in better shape, largely due to supplies left over from December 2012, when storms drenched many parts of California.

Thanks to that month, statewide precipitation in the 2013 water year, which ended September 30th, was 73% of average — the 29th driest on record, according to the regional climate center.

If this winter stays dry, the hardest-hit will likely be farmers in some parts of the San Joaquin Valley and rural communities that depend on wells.

In Southern California, regional water managers say they have enough supplies in reserve to maintain deliveries for the next two years and do not expect to ration sales.

Storage in Pyramid and Castaic lakes, the two state reservoirs that the Southland draws directly from, is slightly above average for the date.

Diamond Valley Lake in Riverside County, where the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California stores imported supplies, is nearly three-quarters full.

The snowpack, which is a measurement of the snow’s water content, not its depth, was the lowest in the northern mountains, at 11% of average for the date. It was the highest in the southern Sierra, at 30% of the norm.

The statewide snowpack figure of 20% tied with 2012 as the driest early January reading in 25 years of records.


http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-sierra-snowpack-20140103,0,939473.story
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« Reply #285 on: January 04, 2014, 06:35:56 pm »


from The Sydney Morning Herald....

2013 confirmed as Australia's hottest year on record

By PETER HANNAM | Friday, January 03, 2014

Australia smashed its previous annual heat record in 2013. — Photo: Glenn Campbell.
Australia smashed its previous annual heat record in 2013. — Photo: Glenn Campbell.

AUSTRALIA smashed its previous annual heat record in 2013, with a summer heatwave and spring hot spell among the outstanding periods of unusual warmth.

The Bureau of Meteorology on Friday confirmed that last year was the hottest nationwide in more than a century of standardised records, with mean temperatures 1.2 degrees above the 1961-90 average.

Every state and the Northern Territory recorded at least their fourth warmest year by mean temperatures, underscoring the breadth of 2013's unusual heat. By maximums, all but Victoria and Tasmania recorded their hottest years, with nationwide maximums a full 1.45 degrees above the long-term average, shattering the previous record anomaly of 1.21 degrees set in 2002.

Among the cities, Sydney posted daily maximums averaging 23.7 degrees in 2013, well above the previous high in more than 150 years of records, of 23.4 degrees set in both 2004 and 2005, said Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology. Minimum temperatures were the third-highest, at 15.1 degrees, a shade below the 15.2 degrees set in 2007 and 2009.

Melbourne posted its third hottest year, also based on records going back to the 1850s, with maximums averaging 21.5 degrees, shy of 2007's record of 21.8 degrees. The city's minimums averaged 12.2 degrees, second only to 2007's 12.5 degrees.

This January has also started with a blast of heat over inland regions, with Moomba in South Australia recording 49.3 degrees on Thursday, while Birdsville in Queensland clocked up 48.6 degrees.

Walgett, meanwhile, reached 49.1 degrees on Friday, the highest for the state since 1939, the Bureau of Meteorology's Dr Trewin said. Walgett, in fact, was only one many towns to set records on Friday, with others including Moree, Tamworth, Armidale, Narrabri and Coonabarabran in NSW, and St George and Roma in Queensland.

The hot air mass is slowly shifting east. Brisbane may challenge its record high of 43.2 degrees on Saturday, with 41 degrees currently forecast.

"That (forecast) would be factoring in some possibility of a sea breeze," said the bureau's Dr Trewin. "If the sea breeze fails, anything could happen."


Australia's heat in 2013: no region below average. — Souce: Bureau of Meteorology.
Australia's heat in 2013: no region below average. — Souce: Bureau of Meteorology.

‘Unprecedented year’

David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, said 2013 was "an unprecedented year" for Australia not least because it came in a period without an El Nino weather pattern over the Pacific. The so-called El Nino-Southern Oscillation - which typically warms up eastern Australia in particular — remained in neutral through the year, and continues to do so.

"These record high temperatures for Australia in 2013 cannot be explained by natural variability alone," Professor Karoly said. "This event could not have happened without increasing greenhouse gases, without climate change."

A heatwave in early January, when the national average maximum temperatures reached 40.3 degrees on January 7th, set the country up for a hot year. January was Australia's hottest month on record and December 2012-February 2013 was the hottest summer.[/size]

Neutral conditions

Unusually warm waters around Australia helped keep temperatures well above average in 2013, while many parts of the country recorded their mildest winters on record.

Climate experts say another intense El Nino year, such as in 1998, could challenge even 2013's newly set temperature highs.

Australia's warmth during 2013 extended into spring, with September setting records as the most exceptionally hot month on record. Average maximum temperatures were 3.41 degrees above the long-run average, with South Australia's 5.39 degrees above the norm — a record for any state or territory in any month.

The heat was accompanied by early season bushfires, particularly around Sydney in October, and extensive drought across much of Queensland.

Rainfall nationally averaged 428 millimetres, about 37 millimetres below average, for the year.


Wet in the north west in 2013, mostly dry or average rain elsewhere. — Souce: Bureau of Meteorology.
Wet in the north west in 2013, mostly dry or average rain elsewhere. — Souce: Bureau of Meteorology.

Capitals, states, world

Aside from Sydney and Melbourne, most other state capitals also had notably hot years.

Canberra and Hobart posted their second warmest years. Perth had its third-warmest year by maximum temperatures, while Darwin and Adelaide had their third-equal warmest. Brisbane, in the midst of a very warm period to start 2014, lagged in 2013 with only its ninth warmest year.

Among the states, NSW had its warmest year, with maximums 1.76 degrees above the long-term average, beating the 1.63 degree anomaly set in 2002, said the bureau's Dr Trewin. By mean temperature, the state was the second warmest on record, behind 2009.

For Victoria, maximum temperatures were 1.3 degrees above normal, placing it third-warmest on records behind the 1.42 degree anomaly set in 2007. Both mean and minimums were also third-highest for the state.

South Australia was exceptional in a remarkable year, with the state setting its highest maximum, mean and minimum temperatures, the bureau said.

Globally, 2013 was the sixth hottest year in records dating back to 1880. No year since 1985 has recorded a below-average global mean temperature reading, and nine of the 10 warmest years have occurred in the past 12 years, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

The bureau also noted that only one year in the last decade was cooler than average, when a strong La Nina weather pattern over the Pacific kept temperatures low in 2011. The average for each of the rolling 10-year periods from 1995-2004 to 2004-2013 have been among the top 10 records, it said.


Many towns across southern Queensland and northern NSW set temperature records on Friday. — Souce: Bureau of Meteorology.
Many towns across southern Queensland and northern NSW set temperature records on Friday. — Souce: Bureau of Meteorology.

Politic debate

Australia's warmth prompted heat of a political kind, with Greens and Labor saying the records mean the Abbott government is wrong to be attempting to scrap having a price on carbon.

Acting Greens leader Richard di Natale said it went against all evidence for the government to unwind the carbon tax.

"Tony Abbott’s a reckless ideologue who ignores the science and is intent on listening to people who are part of the tinfoil hat brigade," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"The experts right around the world are telling him loudly and clearly that we’ve got a big problem on our hands and we’ve got to start taking action to fix it."

Acting opposition leader Penny Wong said the only people in Australia who didn’t believe in climate change were Mr Abbott and his cabinet.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said that was nonsense.

"What we will do is take direct action that will reduce emissions and we’ll meet our 5 per cent reduction target" of 2000 carbon emission levels by 2020, she told reporters in Perth.

"Under Labor’s carbon tax, prices go up and emissions go up so Labor’s response was a nonsense."

Senator Wong said the government’s direct action policy was "a con job you have when you think that climate change is absolute crap".

Environment Minister Greg Hunt was asked to comment directly on the Bureau of Meteorology’s finding that "the past year emphasises that the warming trend continues" but did not respond.


http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/2013-confirmed-as-australias-hottest-year-on-record-20140103-308ek.html
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« Reply #286 on: January 05, 2014, 12:48:43 pm »

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« Reply #287 on: January 05, 2014, 01:08:11 pm »


Yep....something which was warned about decades ago.

Increased average worldwide temperatures mean more EXTREMES of climate (both hot AND cold) as climate change causes havoc.


Not to worry....when insurance companies (reacting to the effects of climate change) price insurance cover for YOUR property right off the market (way above your ability to pay), you'll be able to tightly screw your eyes shut, stick your fingers in your ears, and chant over and over and over again, “it's all bullshit....it isn't happening!”, then hope like hell your home doesn't get damaged in a storm.

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« Reply #288 on: January 05, 2014, 03:36:38 pm »

In the past we had warmer weather than now

we also had an ice age

There are places under the sea that were once dry land

Climate change is all part of our normal cycle of existence

The main problem on planet earth is that we have let the control freaks fuck up all the human minds
with their brain washed agenda.

Hello Ya Fucking Zombies


WHAT WE NEED IS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT THE BANKS WILL SAVE US hahaha  suckers Grin


The Year the World Bank Fused Sustainable Development with Its Goals for the Future


The World Bank Group set two ambitious goals in 2013, and in the process made clear that one concept will underlie its actions toward both: sustainability.

"Ending extreme poverty within a generation and promoting shared prosperity must be achieved in such a way as to be sustainable over time and across generations," the goals document reads. "This requires promoting environmental, social, and fiscal sustainability. We need to secure the long-term future of our planet and its resources so future generations do not find themselves in a wasteland."

With the goals as a foundation, the Bank Group set a clear direction for its energy work going forward that focuses on exanding energy access, use of renewable energy, and improvement in energy efficiency. In urban development, it launched the Low-Carbon, Livable Cities Initiative to help fast-growing cities in developing countries plan for sustainable development and prepare to finance it. The World Bank Group also established a firm, evidence-supported position on climate change and on the critical need for building resilience and integrating disaster risk management into development to save lives and avoid millions of people falling back into poverty.

In other sectors, the Bank Group expanded sustainable development principles by ramping up work in the use of information and communication technologies, support for public transportation systems, development of climate-smart agriculture, and work in integrated urban water management. A new report on social inclusion dove deeper into the forces behind exclusion that challenge sustainable development and the goal of shared prosperity.

Sustainable Energy for All

In June, the World Bank Board of Directors, representing 188 member countries, put expanding energy access and accelerating energy efficiency and renewable energy at the core of the Bank Group's work in the sector. The energy directions paper embraced the goals of a new international initiative: Sustainable Energy for All , chaired by World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Its goals: by 2030, achieve universal energy access, double the share of renewable energy in the global mix, and double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency.

The energy directions paper also drew global attention for its position on coal: It affirmed that the World Bank Group will “only in rare circumstances” provide financial support for new greenfield coal power generation projects. Several multilateral development banks and developed country governments followed with similar pledges.

The Bank also increased its focus on geothermal exploration, reducing gas flaring, and, through its ESMAP partnership, increasing the use of cleaner cookstoves and helping cities improve their energy efficiency.

Significantly, the directions paper emphasizes energy prices as a key to energy efficiency and growing the share of renewable energy sources in countries' energy mix.

Low-Carbon, Livable Cities

From Africa to Asia, city leaders were talking with the World Bank about resilience and low-carbon development. They want to build a long, successful future, but most of them face a serious challenge: finance. Only 4 percent of the 150 largest cities in developing countries are considered creditworthy in international financial markets, and only 20 percent in local markets.

The World Bank launched its Low-Carbon, Livable Cities Initiative in 2013 to help. It focuses on two vital steps: urban planning, including developing the greenhouse gas accounting and other data and analysis needed for informed decisions, and helping cities raise their credit ratings so they can tap into the finance needed.

The Bank's first City Creditworthiness Training Program for African cities drew 55 senior municipal administrators from 10 countries for a five-day training event in October to get them started. The program's ambitious goal: help 300 cities in developing countries raise their credit ratings over the next four years and begin securing projects and finance. With the many other partners focused on cities, we see momentum growing around support for municipal and city leaders and institutions.

Open Quotes
We need to secure the long-term future of our planet and its resources so future generations do not find themselves in a wasteland.  Close Quotes
World Bank Group Goals Document
Climate Change

Throughout 2013, the World Bank focused attention on large-scale work to address climate change through sustainable development across the sectors. The Turn Down the Heat  reports  provided evidence of the danger: without action to stop it, climate change threatens to roll back decades of development progress, and while everyone will be affected, the poor will suffer the most.

The Bank focused on where climate action can make the greatest difference: building low-carbon, resilient cities by mobilizing finance, urban planning, and expertise; moving forward on climate-smart agriculture to make the food supply more resilient to climate change and help sequester carbon; accelerating energy efficiency, investment in renewable energy, and universal access to energy; and, underpinning these actions, the Bank began looking at how to lay the groundwork for a robust price on carbon and how to ramp up efforts to remove harmful fossil fuel subsidies.

"Get the prices right, get finance flowing, and work where it matters most," Vice President for Sustainable Development Rachel Kyte told world leaders at the climate change conference in Warsaw in November.

Looking Ahead

In the coming year, Vice President Kyte will move to a new role as World Bank Group Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change. The new structure allows expertise from across the entire World Bank Group to be brought together to support solutions for all clients. It is a concrete response to mitigating and adapting to climate change and building investment in resilience through urban planning, sustainable energy and transportation, energy efficient construction, integrated water management, disaster risk management, and climate-smart agriculture.

As 2013 turns into 2014, and with Typhoon Haiyan and the people of the Philippines in our hearts and minds, World Bank Group President Kim's call for plans that are appropriately scaled to the size of the challenge is matched by the requests for partnership. We will do all we can to play our part and encourage others to step up.

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2013/12/23/year-world-bank-fused-sustainable-development-goals-future

Its mostly all about corruption

Corruption, Institutions and Sustainable Development
by Bertrand Venard
When civil servants make decisions based purely on their own personal interests, their decisions are not likely to be of benefit to society




An argument has been rumbling on for years amongst experts concerning the real effect of corruption on a country’s economy. Despite widespread condemnation of corruption, some academics insist that such illegal practices as bribery do in fact grease the wheels of economic growth.
Three main explanations have been given for the potential positive influence of corruption on economic development. It has been suggested that bribes attract a better quality of civil servants. If there is a higher quality of civil servants then, they argue, better economic decisions will be made. Also, bribing implies speeding up the bureaucratic process which could lead to an increase in economic development. Thus, a business leader getting import / export documents quickly from a very busy administration service is likely to be a supporter of the view that paying some extra unofficial fees allows business to be done faster and better. Finally, corruption can be seen as a form of competition for official resources leading to better government services.

The opposing view is that corruption throws sand in the wheels of economic development. The usual definition of corruption as the “sale of government property for private gain” leads to the intuitive conclusion that corruption has a negative influence on economic growth. When civil servants make decisions based purely on their own personal interests, their decisions are not likely to be of benefit to society.

Three main arguments could be given to highlight the negative influence of corruption on the economy. Firstly, the most important loss in economic growth linked to corruption is due to the inefficient allocation of resources. If a Minister makes a decision according to the highest bribe, little attention would be paid to a country’s or state’s needs. The result can be seen, for example, in an unnecessary splendid building or a crass and expensive project which serves as a front for the hidden money that will flow into the pockets of greedy politicians. In addition, to receive bribes, civil servants will create restrictions to economic development. The more complicated are the rules for obtaining a passport or any authorization, the higher is the opportunity to demand bribes, Furthermore, many private businesses, such as foreign investors dislike corruption and therefore avoid investing in corrupt economic sectors or countries. Bad investments, restrictions to business and less private investments will lead to slower economic development.

In a recent academic article published in the October 2013 issue of the Economics Bulletin, my research showed that corruption should categorically be seen as sand in the wheels of economic development.

To arrive at this conclusion I used macroeconomic data collected by the World Bank over a period of ten years in 120 countries, including India. This large research base allowed me to verify that a higher quality of institutional framework implies a lower level of corruption. By institutions, researchers mean the rules of the games. To assess the overall quality of the institutions, measurements were used concerning for example the law, law enforcement or government effectiveness (quality of public services).

Furthermore, the analysis proves that a higher quality of institutional framework implies more sustainable economic development. This conclusion was made possible by using a relatively recent measure of genuine sustainable development instead of the typical GDP / capita to assess economic development. The GDP per capita is too simplistic given that economic development is about sustainable improvements in human welfare and that GDP per capita cannot measure this aspect.

Sustainable development has been defined by the Nobel Prize laureate Kenneth Arrow as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs”. This is expressed as the sum of the values of investments or disinvestments in each of capital assets. Sustainable economic development therefore takes into account economic development but also includes the changes in the natural resources base and environmental quality as well as the change in the human capital. For example, estimates of the depletion of a variety of natural resources are deducted to reflect the decline in asset values linked with their extraction and harvest. In the same way, pollution damages are deducted.

The result of my research is clear: better institutions lead to higher sustainable economic development. Conversely, the effect of the quality of institutions is stronger when the country has a low quality of institutions than when the country enjoys a high quality in this area.

Finally, the new data shows that the lower the corruption, the higher the sustainable economic development. Thus, corruption is definitely negative for development, and in the long term negative for a development that respects both humans and nature. In countries with low quality institutions, both the institutional quality and the corruption level account for nearly 25% of the variance of the sustainable economic development. Improving the standard of institutions and fighting corruption should be a priority in any country wishing to build a better future for its population in terms of sustainable development.

Bertrand Venard, professor of strategy, Audencia Nantes School of Management, France
http://forbesindia.com/article/special/corruption-institutions-and-sustainable-development/36673/1

 


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« Reply #289 on: January 06, 2014, 12:33:44 pm »


Last winter warmest on record

The Dominion Post | 10:31AM - Monday, 06 January 2013

A graph showing the historic temperature increase. The zero line is the average temperature from 1961-1990.
A graph showing the historic temperature increase. The zero line is the average temperature from 1961-1990.

NEW ZEALAND has emerged from its second-warmest year and warmest winter on record.

But it is bad news, as it follows a global trend which an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report blaming it on "increasing greenhouse gases augmenting the greenhouse effect".

Climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger this morning released the figures.

The above-average temperatures were expected to continue this year, he said.

They show 2013 was the warmest winter nationally since records began in 1870.

Last year was the second-warmest on record nationally with temperatures on average 0.84 degrees Celsius above normal. The only year it was hotter was 1998, when it was 0.89C above average.

Masterton, Omarama, Timaru, Invercargill and the Chatham Islands all had record years.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9580148/Last-winter-warmest-on-record
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« Reply #290 on: January 06, 2014, 04:55:30 pm »

Quote
Climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger this morning released the figures.



Jim Salinger!  Say no more.
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« Reply #291 on: January 06, 2014, 06:00:20 pm »

shove this up ya date Jim

http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/americas/9579297/US-hunkers-down-for-polar-vortex





Global warming? No, the planet is getting cooler

http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/427980/Global-warming-No-the-planet-is-getting-cooler
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« Reply #292 on: January 07, 2014, 07:33:30 am »


Doom clouds over Wairarapa's pinot

Winter snow on the Tararua Range and Wairarapa
pinot noir are under threat from climate change.


By TOM HUNT - The Dominion Post | 6:30AM - Tuesday, 07 January 2014

MOZZIES will come up trumps but winter snow on the Tararua Range and Martinborough's famed pinot noir are under threat from global warming.

While leading Wairarapa winemakers say the region's top drop is safe for a while yet, climate scientist Jim Salinger is warning its days could be numbered as temperatures rise.

He said New Zealand just ended its second warmest year since records began in 1870 and last winter was New Zealand's warmest on record.

High temperatures were expected to continue this year and while individual years could experience a drop in average temperatures, New Zealand and the world would get warmer through the years, Dr Salinger said. It was a direct impact of gases increasing the "greenhouse effect", he said. By 2030 to 2040 New Zealand would be about one degree Celsius warmer.

Last year's average temperature was 13.03°C, 0.84°C above average. Some bugs — notably mosquitoes, which got knocked back by annual frosts — would thrive, he said. Water would be more likely to fall on the Southern Alps as rain, rather than snow, and run straight off in winter. Snow that settled would melt earlier, meaning less water coming down the rivers to the plains. Around the lower North Island, winter snow on the Tararua Range "may well become a thing of the past", Dr Salinger said. Wairarapa vineyards might have to switch from grapes that grew in colder climates — such as pinot noir — to varieties such as those now grown in the warmer Hawke's Bay, he said. But Margrain Vineyard winemaker Strat Canning, of Martinborough, was not concerned about his pinot noir grapes in the next five to 10 years.

Mr Canning, who was "not an absolute convert" that global warming existed, said that while pinot noir needed cold conditions, Wairarapa nights would have to get a lot warmer to make the variety ungrowable.

Ata Rangi Vineyard winemaker Helen Masters said it was simplistic to look at entire-year averages in winemaking.

Over winter months the vine canopy was growing but it was not until January till March that pinot noir grapes were going through "tannin development" - the crucial part in grape development.

The 2013 harvest was shaping up to be one of the best vintages in years, she said. Grape growers kept an eye on weather patterns.

As protection, Ata Rangi had long planted varieties such as syrah, cabernet and merlot, which were more suited to warmer weather. Temperatures would need to rise significantly to rule pinot noir out in Wairarapa, she said.

Federated Farmers president Bruce Wills said farmers would adapt: "You either adapt or you die." This century could see tropical fruits or rice grown in northern parts of the country, he said.

Better water storage was needed - dams that could store rain and send it down rivers in a steady flow through the year.

His own Hawke's Bay farm had "100-year variations" in 12 months last year, from the one-in-70-year drought last summer to one of the easiest winters he could remember.

Climate scientist Brett Mullan, of the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric research (NIWA), agreed global temperatures were rising due to greenhouse gases.

While Dr Salinger used 22 sites to reach his conclusion that 2013 was the second warmest on record, Niwa used seven sites.

They showed 2013 to be the third-warmest on record.


http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/9582791/Doom-clouds-over-Wairarapas-pinot
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« Reply #293 on: January 07, 2014, 07:34:42 am »

Quote
Climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger this morning released the figures.



Jim Salinger!  Say no more.


Tell us all about YOUR science degree majoring in climatology.
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« Reply #294 on: January 07, 2014, 09:56:40 am »

Quote
Climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger this morning released the figures.



Jim Salinger!  Say no more.


Tell us all about YOUR science degree majoring in climatology.

Mmmmm
One thing I haven't done, is move recording devices to suit an agenda - and I don't massage figures and statistics...  Didn't he get arseholed from NIWA for his antics?
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« Reply #295 on: January 07, 2014, 09:43:05 pm »

North America arctic blast creeps

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25632586













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« Reply #296 on: January 07, 2014, 09:55:22 pm »

Quote
Quote
The IPCC concedes for the first time that a
15 year-long period of no significant
warming occurred since 1998 despite a 7%
rise in carbon dioxide (CO2). It also
acknowledges that on a longer (more
climatic) time scale the rate of global
warming has decelerated since 1951, despite
an accompanying 80 ppm or 26% increase in
carbon dioxide (312 to 392 ppm).
The statement represents a significant revision in
IPCC thinking
[/quote

http://www.sepp.org/key_issues/critique_of_ipcc_spm.pdf
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« Reply #297 on: January 08, 2014, 12:30:24 pm »

tell a lie a few times and it becomes the truth. This self serving bastard is an expert

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html
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« Reply #298 on: January 09, 2014, 07:44:23 am »




re mess # 292

http://nz.news.yahoo.com/video/watch/20624146/2013-nzs-second-hottest-year-on-record/

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« Reply #299 on: January 09, 2014, 07:33:11 pm »

Oh no we had a warm winter the expert calls that the canary in the coal mine

we in for warmer weather unless we repent from using energy that and pay Al Gore's carbon credit firm Gore and Blood lot's of money and they will save us from warm weather hahaha what a silly joke  Grin
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