Wood-Be Inferno
Filed Under Environment, Musings | Leave a Comment
Via ClimateProgress this morning:
We show that increases in temperature cause annual mean area burned in the western United States to increase by 54% by the 2050s relative to the present-day … with the forests of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains experiencing the greatest increases of 78% and 175% respectively.
Increased area burned results in near doubling of wildfire carbonaceous aerosol emissions by mid-century.
This outlook is painted in a scenario of moderately increasing emissions of greenhouse gas emissions and leads to average global warming of 1.6 degrees Celsius (3 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050.
Moderate (or medium) is the focus of the above weather synopsis, both in CO2 emissions and warming temperatures.
However, reality might be different.
Last March, the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change met in Copenhagen, Denmark, with more than 2,000 registered participants and nearly 1,600 scientific studies from researchers in more than 70 countries.
A key finding:
Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realised.
For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived.
These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events.
There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.
The IPCC is The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, tasked by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity.
The panel was established in 1988 and shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore.
And the IPCC’s worse-case scenario?
Again from ClimateProgress:
The A1F1 scenario takes us to atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide of 1000 ppm (parts-per-million)in 2100 — otherwise known as the end of human civilization as we have known it.
Actually it’s worse than that.
The 2001 IPCC report largely failed to model amplifying carbon cycle feedbacks.
The 2007 IPCC report, which began to consider such feedbacks, warns that even averaging 11 GtC (billion metric tons of carbon) a year this century could take us to 1000 ppm.
Complicated is not the half in the science of global warming — immediate and current physical impacts does, however, like more tornados, longer hot spells and bigger forest fires.
And the best online site I’ve discovered is Climate Progress to somewhat explain this phenomenon that’s taken not-so-long to get here.
Climate change/warming/cooling in itself appears to be a natural state of the planet, depending upon many variables
There’s even been a “Little Ice Age” somewhat recently (not millions and millions of years ago, anyway), from the late 14th century to the end of the 19th century, but the real change in climate change came just 150 years ago.
The Discovery Channel online has a fairly simple global-warming timline, outlining the movement of climate down through the eons:
The Industrial Revolution added a new player to the climate game: Humans.
Suddenly, we were burning coal and oil in vast amounts and releasing huge amounts of carbon-rich greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
All that carbon has been locked up deep in the earth, where it could not interfere with the climate.
So there you are.
‘Tragedy’ Escalates
Filed Under Just Plain War, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Despite tough tours in Iraq, an even-more persistent and deadly situation:
But he says he never encountered an enemy as tenacious as what he saw immediately after arriving at this outpost in Helmand Province in Afghanistan.
In his first days here in late June, he fought through three ambushes, each lasting as long as the most sustained fight he saw in Anbar.
…
The bombs found so far have been largely homemade with fertilizer, though they have still killed more than 20 British soldiers and United States Marines to the north and south of Nawa.
“If they had better weapons, we’d be in real trouble,” said Lance Cpl. Vazgen Matevosyan.
(Illustration found here).
The upticking war in Afghnistan lies in the vast, ugly shadow of Iraq.
Iraq was on top of the list from the get-go — going after Saddam was topic “A” 10 days after the inauguration — eight months before Sept. 11. “From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime…Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”
In December 2001, even as the incursion into Afghanistan was just winding down and Osama and his boys were reportedly pinned down in the Tora Bora Mountains, George Jr. was meeting repeatedly with Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks and his war cabinet to plan the U.S. attack on Iraq.
This hyper-active bunch’s biggest concern was fueled by the CIA’s conclusion that Saddam couldn’t be knocked-out-of-the-box except through some kick-ass “shock and awe.”
And, of course, George Tenet’s now infamous “slam dunk” claim that Iraq possessed WMD.
A showcase for horrifying, dumb-ass planning: The U.S. would have only 5,000 troops left in Iraq as of December 2006 and assumed the military would be almost completely “re-deployed” out of Iraq within 45 months of the invasion.
In the UK, bloody-dumb business at 10 Downing: “Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, though military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route… There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”
Apparently: What aftermath?
Afghanistan tanked as much-needed, required resources were diverted to the war in Iraq.
From USAToday in March 2004:
In 2002, troops from the 5th Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq.
Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures.
The CIA, meanwhile, was stretched badly in its capacity to collect, translate and analyze information coming from Afghanistan.
When the White House raised a new priority, it took specialists away from the Afghanistan effort to ensure Iraq was covered.
A good look at the overall cause/effect of the Iraqi war on Afghanistan can be found here.
And in the Iraqi blowback: In their quiet moments, aid workers call it “the tragedy:” the billions of dollars that never arrived here. The troops that landed somewhere else. The bright minds that turned to that other, greater subject. And, in all those events, the sad sinking of the promise that greeted the American-led victory over the Taliban in November 2001, more than seven years ago.
The “tragedy” these aid workers are referring to, of course, is the war in Iraq. Not that the Iraq war itself was tragic but that it was calamitous in its results for the other war that suddenly fell to the lower tier. More than any other factor, it is the American invasion of Iraq that looms over Afghanistan and all of its dashed hopes.
Hence to the dangerous, complicated and escalating new/same operation in Afghanistan.
Last October, Gen. David D. McKiernan, head of US/NATO forces in Afghanistan and only four months on the job, said an “Iraqi-style surge” will not work in a country of mountains and few paved roads.
McKiernan described Afghanistan as “a far more complex environment than I ever found in Iraq.”
And this past March, McKiernan opened his big-general’s mouth and told the BBC the war cannot be won via military might: “But there are other areas — large areas in the southern part of Afghanistan especially, but in parts of the east — where we are not winning.”
So then last May, the good general was fired.
Defense honcho Bob Gates, in showing McKiernan the door, was quoted as saying the US needs “fresh eyes” and “fresh thinking” on the becoming-debacle of Afghanistan — so instead named as a replacement an old eye and mind in the form of one, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a true-blue, fierce military nut and fervid warrior of the dark side.
So praise from Dick Cheney: “The decision to send Stan McChrystal…is a good one… “I think the choice is excellent. I think you’d be hard put to find anyone better than Stan McChrystal.”
McKiernan, for his part, claimed he was “dismayed, disappointed, and more than a little embarrassed” about getting the axe — a telling insight into the chaos of the US involvement in Afghanistan.
Also revealing is how the now-retired McKiernan’s emotional outburst — catch words, ‘dismayed, disappointed, embarrassed’ — does kind of float like President Obama’s alliterated vow to “disrupt, dismantle and defeat” al-Qaida.
First and foremost, however, those freakin’ Taliban.
Not only with increase in use of IEDs and suicide bombers, the Taliban are also viewing politics on a world scale.
From foreignpolicy.com last week:
Although 4,000 U.S. Marines entered the Taliban’s heartland in southern Helmand province at the beginning of this month, the Taliban seem to be largely bypassing the Americans to focus on the British contingent in the center and north of the province.
This should not be a surprise.
Public dissatisfaction with the war is growing in Britain and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s unpopular Labour government is facing a general election by June 2010.
Taliban strategists likely believe they have a chance to drive the British from the field.
The UK has indeed been mauled — Twenty-two soldiers, including eight within one 24-hour period have been killed.
According to Pakistan’s The News, a senior British general said the insurgent level in Helmand province was under-rated from three years ago: “We thought that the insurgency still existed in Helmand, but the violence and scale has been shocking,” General Sir Timothy Granville-Chapman said.
Indeed.
In a British poll result released Tuesday by the UK’s The Independent: More than half of voters (52 per cent) want troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan straight away…Fifty-eight per cent view the war as “unwinnable”, with 31 per cent disagreeing.
And with the US?
Obama’s plan right now is to nearly double the US Afghan presence to about 68,000 troops by this year’s end, but from all indications, McChrystal will ask for more boots on the ground, as did one of his advisors today in Washington, though, I’m sure he missed the extreme-ugly irony.
According to VOA:
Senior Washington analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says the United States and its allies need to take the Afghanistan war more seriously.
…
“This war has been fought without resources, but above all without realism,” he said.
…
Cordesman says the current U.S. and British military operation in Helmand Province was launched without adequate preparation for civilian aid after the military delivers stability.
But he said it might still be successful, and could become a model for what is called the clear-hold-and-build approach to defeating insurgents.
In any case, he says, it will provide valuable lessons as Afghan, U.S. and NATO forces prepare to move into other parts of Afghanistan.
In any case, how many US body bags before Afghanistan in its serious realism is understood?
A tragedy.
Stormy Days Of Fever Heat
Filed Under Environment, Media, Politics | Leave a Comment
The earth is indeed melting away.
(Illustration found here).
Clouds, those wispy, sometimes dark and ominoness floating forms we all take for granted as part of our natural environment whenever we look up — when clouds move into together and won’t let the sun shine in, everyone gets a little bit sad.
Now start crying as it seems a cloud can kill — eventually.
From the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science comes research into cloud cover and its impact on global warming:
Using observational data collected over the last 50 years and complex climate models, the team has established that low-level stratiform clouds appear to dissipate as the ocean warms, indicating that changes in these clouds may enhance the warming of the planet.
Because of inconsistencies in historical observations, trends in cloudiness have been difficult to identify.
The team broke through this cloud conundrum by removing errors from cloud records and using multiple data sources for the northeast Pacific Ocean, one of the most well-studied areas of low-level stratiform clouds in the world.
The result of their analysis was a surprising degree of agreement between two multi-decade datasets that were not only independent of each other, but that employed fundamentally different measurement methods. One set consisted of collected visual observations from ships over the last 50 years, and the other was based on data collected from weather satellites.
“The agreement we found between the surface-based observations and the satellite data was almost shocking,” said Clement, a professor of meteorology and physical oceanography at the University of Miami, and winner of the American Geophysical Union’s 2007 Macelwane Award for her groundbreaking work on climate change.
“These are subtle changes that take place over decades. It is extremely encouraging that a satellite passing miles above the earth would document the same thing as sailors looking up at a cloudy sky from the deck of a ship.”
And what about some top secret US military pictures from high above the earth which enhance the shocking effect (and truth) of a dying planet?
The last guys in charge of the US hated the words, “global warming,” and so did everything in their power to censor any science about the subject.
Declassified US military spy-satellite photos taken over the past decade reveal water and very little ice over the Artic — bad global-warming evidence, suppressed by George Jr and his boys, just released by President Obama’s administration.
From the UK’s The Guardian:
One particularly striking set of images – selected from the 1,000 photographs released – includes views of the Alaskan port of Barrow.
One, taken in July 2006, shows sea ice still nestling close to the shore.
A second image shows that by the following July the coastal waters were entirely ice-free.
The photographs demonstrate starkly how global warming is changing the Arctic. More than a million square kilometres of sea ice — a record loss — were missing in the summer of 2007 compared with the previous year.
Nor has this loss shown any sign of recovery. Ice cover for 2008 was almost as bad as for 2007, and this year levels look equally sparse.
…
Disappearing summer sea ice poses considerable dangers, scientists have warned.
Ice shelves are used by animals such as polar bears as platforms for hunting seals and other sea creatures. Without them, they could starve.
In addition, ice reflects solar radiation.
Without that process, the Arctic sea could warm up even more.
The phenomenon threatens to set off runaway heating of the planet, say climatologists.
And what about funds for keeping track of this runaway climate thing?
The latest revelations have triggered warnings from scientists that they no longer have the funds to keep a comprehensive track of climate change.
Last week the head of the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Professor Jane Lubchenco, warned that the gathering of satellite data — crucial to predicting future climate changes — was now at “great risk” because America’s ageing satellite fleet was not being replaced.
This ‘thing’ with climate change/global warming is most-likely its appearance as a snail’s pace of a problem and won’t effect anyone in a long, long time — humans react to more immediate dangers first.
The big problem is that the problem is already here — what was once confined to the tropics is now in middle America.
From Bloomberg:
Mosquitoes that can transmit dengue fever, a disease that’s sometimes fatal and is more common in the tropics, are now found in 28 U.S. states and may extend their reach further as temperatures warm, a study said.
(Illustration found here).
The reasearch study from the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group, also reported dengue infections have multiplied by thirty in the last 50 years, with as many as 100 million annual cases and 22,000 deaths worldwide.
Mosquitoes are tough-skinned little sumbitches — they can more easily survive and spread when winters are milder, so global warming may increase transmission.
Hey, don’t kill the freakin’ messenger — even David Letterman knows us humans are in reality ‘Dead Meat.’
‘Same Donkey…New Saddle’
Filed Under Media, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
An example of why this so-called ‘War on Terror’ is such a complete, abysmal failure.
Sen. James Webb, Democrat from Virginia, has called for an investigation into the details surrounding an attack on a US outpost in eastern Afghanistan last year, which left nine soldiers dead, and offers past Army lies as an incentive.
“The manner in which the Army mishandled the aftermath of Pat Tillman’s tragic death raised serious questions about the integrity of some who held high positions in its leadership structure,” Webb, who saw intense combat as a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam, said in an e-mailed statement.
“This incident raises similar questions. Its importance is not merely to provide lessons learned for future operations. It speaks directly about the Army’s ability to speak honestly to itself and to the American public.”
Webb is after details from the top down.
He sent a letter earlier this month to the Pentagon’s IG citing an unreleased draft report on the July 2008 attack in the village of Wanat near the Pakistan border — the draft report was sharply critical of Army brass prior to the assault — and the senator wrote: “I believe a more thorough consideration of senior command accountability is warranted.”
The historian’s draft report said soldiers at the remote base were short of basic necessities such as water and sandbags and repeatedly complained that they were in a precarious position.
A few days before the assault, the report continues, a U.S. helicopter attack mistakenly killed all of the Afghan doctors and nurses from a local clinic, infuriating villagers throughout the area.
Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom, the platoon leader who was killed at the Wanat base, sent word up to his senior commanders that he was worried that a retaliatory attack was imminent, the draft report states.
Rather than bolstering security, officers at Bagram air base ordered the withdrawal of all intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets from the area.
Brostrom’s father, retired Army Col. David. P. Brostrom, alerted Webb’s office to the Army historian’s report. “After I read the report, I was sick to my stomach,” Brostrom said.
The killing of Tillman, a former NFL player, is why the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable, and the US Army itself is the reason: The documents also show that officers made erroneous initial reports that Tillman was killed by enemy fire, destroyed critical evidence and initially concealed the truth from Tillman’s brother, also an Army Ranger, who was near the attack on April 22, 2004, but did not witness it.
And this from Malalai Joya, a former member of the Afghan parliament, in a commentary in the UK’s the Guardian:
You must understand that the government headed by Hamid Karzai is full of warlords and extremists who are brothers in creed of the Taliban.
Many of these men committed terrible crimes against the Afghan people during the civil war of the 1990s.
For expressing my views I have been expelled from my seat in parliament, and I have survived numerous assassination attempts.
The fact that I was kicked out of office while brutal warlords enjoyed immunity from prosecution for their crimes should tell you all you need to know about the “democracy” backed by Nato troops.
In the constitution it forbids those guilty of war crimes from running for high office.
Yet Karzai has named two notorious warlords, Fahim and Khalili, as his running mates for the upcoming presidential election.
Under the shadow of warlordism, corruption and occupation, this vote will have no legitimacy, and once again it seems the real choice will be made behind closed doors in the White House. As we say in Afghanistan, “the same donkey with a new saddle.”
And the beat goes on…
War’s Media “Bloodbath’
Filed Under Just Plain War, Media | Leave a Comment
There are old war correspondents and bold war correspondents but no old, bold war correspondents…
– Joseph L. Galloway
In an age of seemingly perpetual war all over the globe, those reporting from the front are dying at an alarming rate.
From Agence France-Presse:
Fifty-nine journalists have been killed around the world so far this year, in an alarming rise from 2008 that has become a “bloodbath” of the media, a watchdog said Thursday.
The Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) said 53 journalists were killed in the first six months, up from 45 in the first half of last year, but highlighted another six killings in July including Russian journalist and rights activist Natalya Estemirova who was murdered on July 15.
Mexico leads the media blackspots with seven journalist killings this year, according to the PEC.
It said there were six in Pakistan, five each in Iraq, the Philippines, Russia and Somalia, four in Gaza and Honduras, three in Colombia, two each in Afghanistan, Guatemala, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Venezuela and one in India, Indonesia, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, and Madagascar.
The big threat is not necessarily from actual combat as politics plays the death card more often than not, and local news people are more apt to die than a foreign correspondent.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 742 news people have been killed since 1992 worldwide (through July 8, 2009) with murder the main charge in 71.8 percent of the time vs. only 17.8 percent dying in actual combat.
And the biggest perpetrators?
- Political groups: 32.1 percent
- Government officials: 18.3 percent
- And the military: 5.8 percent
- Local/national reporters die 86.5 percent of the time, while foreign news service people at only 13.5 percent.
The guts to these murdered journalists — those who actually did the killing received complete impunity in 88.7 percent of the cases.
In March 2007, Reuters reported on a study by the International News Safety Institute (INSI): More than 1,100 journalists and support staff have been killed carrying out their work in the past decade and the annual toll has jumped since 2003, the year of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
And it’s worse at home:
Worldwide, last year was the worst for media workers with 167 killed worldwide, up from 149 in 2005 and 131 in 2004. That compares with 94 in 2003, 70 in 2002 and 103 in 2001.
The total tally since the start of 1996 was 1,101, said the report, “Killing the Messenger.”
Nearly half were shot and the vast majority — at least 657 people — were murdered covering news during peacetime in their own country.
J-School with a flak jacket.
And according to Joe Galloway (from above) for a war reporter to avoid getting killed — among a long list:
Strive to look as much like a private of whatever service you are travelling with. You do NOT want to stand out like a sore thumb. BLEND IN! If you look different you may thus appear important to someone peering through a sniper scope. If he is low on ammo or short on time he will definitely shoot you first. Those on the recent media exercise who declared that they had to look different, and donned brightly colored shirts and vests or stripped the camo cover off their kevlar helmet and substituted white tape with a large PRESS emblazoned thereon, are idiots. It is not worth dying to make a statement about your civilian status.
…
Avoid animals. Period. Cute dogs and other critters bite. Then you go to the rear to get your rabies shots.
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There is no way I can prepare someone who has never witnessed combat for the shock of the first sight of a badly wounded soldier, screaming in pain, begging for his mother. Or the sight of the face of a young soldier in death….a soldier of either side. You will learn to process the images and move on and do your job. But what you see in battle will never leave you.
In combat you may find that those around you may need a helping hand. Do not shy away from an opportunity to act first as a concerned human being and then later as a reporter. Help the wounded, if called to do so. Carry water or ammo or the dead if it seems needed. None of that violates either the Geneva Convention or your objectivity as a journalist.
And take care…