America’s three “benchmark” glaciers are melting and over the past two decades they have been shrinking at an accelerated rate because of global warming.

The glaciers in Alaska and Washington have undergone a “rapid and sustained” loss of mass since 1989. Scientists at the U.S. Geologic Survey think this “decline could be the result of recent climate changes” overcoming seasonal fluctuations that impact the glaciers’ size.

These findings, “Fifty-Year Record of Glacier Change Reveals Shifting Climate in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, USA“, were released in a report by the USGS on Thursday.

The southern-most glacier in the study, South Cascade Glacier in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, has lost almost half of its volume and a quarter of its mass since the USGS began collecting data in 1957.

This picture sequence shows the retreat of the South Cascade Glacier during the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st century. This glacier is melting at a rate that may cause it to disappear in 50 years.

1. The Guardian reports Hillary Clinton has hinted the United States may join international war crimes court. The Secretary of State, speaking at a public meeting in Kenya, “expressed regret” that the U.S. has not joined the International Criminal Court.

   “This is a great regret that we are not a signatory. I think we could have worked out some of the challenges that are raised concerning our membership. But that has not yet come to pass,” she said.

   There is division in the Obama White House whether or not the U.S. should join. U.S. “membership would be difficult while the US was still in Iraq and the prison at Guantánamo Bay remained open.”

2. The NY Times reports the U.S. Birth rate has declined as because of the Great Recession. “In 2007, the number of births in the United States broke a 50-year-old record high, set during the baby boom. But last year, births began to decline nationwide, by nearly 2 percent, according to provisional figures released last week” by the National Center for Health Statistics.

   “As more families were feeling the effects of layoffs and economic uncertainty, births decreased even faster… Historically, birth rates have fluctuated with the economy.”

3. The LA Times reports the Death of Pakistan Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud is confirmed. “Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mahsud, Pakistan’s most wanted terrorist and a staunch Al Qaeda ally, was killed in an American missile strike, a Pakistani government minister confirmed today”.

   “The missile strike came from a U.S. unmanned aircraft that attacked the home of Mahsud’s father-in-law in Pakistan’s South Waziristan tribal region early Wednesday. Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mahsud’s second wife was among at least two people killed.”

   The NY Times notes it was a Missile strike from a CIA drone that killed Mehsud. “The C.I.A. made killing Mr. Mehsud one of its top priorities this year, partly at the urging of Pakistan’s civilian government.” Which again raises the question, why have we allowed the CIA to get in the business of waging war? Don’t we have a perfectly good military for this purpose?

   The CS Monitor asks Is Pakistan safer now? Maybe. “Many analysts in Pakistan say his death will substantially undermine Taliban operations in the country.” Experts are now expecting the Taliban to splinter into regional factions.

4. The NY Times reports the White House struggles to gauge Afghan war progress. “The Obama administration is struggling to come up with a long-promised plan to measure whether the war is being won.”

   The administration is seeking concrete signs of “success”. “That is especially difficult in a war like the one in Afghanistan, in which eliminating corruption, promoting a working democracy and providing effective aid are as critical as scoring military success against insurgents and terrorists.”

   But, “when President Obama unveiled his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in March, he emphasized the importance of these measures.”

   “We will set clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ll consistently assess our efforts to train Afghan security forces and our progress in combating insurgents. We will measure the growth of Afghanistan’s economy and its illicit narcotics production. And we will review whether we are using the right tools and tactics to make progress towards accomplishing our goals.”

   Seems to me goals and benchmarks should have been established before additional troops were committed to the conflict.

1. Sure good to see President Obama looking out for corporate America. The NY Times reports White House acknowledges it will protect Big Pharma.

   Pressed by industry lobbyists, White House officials on Wednesday assured drug makers that the administration stood by a behind-the-scenes deal to block any Congressional effort to extract cost savings from them beyond an agreed-upon $80 billion.

   Drug industry lobbyists reacted with alarm this week to a House health care overhaul measure that would allow the government to negotiate drug prices and demand additional rebates from drug manufacturers.

   In response, the industry successfully demanded that the White House explicitly acknowledge for the first time that it had committed to protect drug makers from bearing further costs in the overhaul.

   Meanwhile, Congress seeks $1 trillion to cover the the health legislation.

2. ABC News reports Environmental groups say Obama’s mining pick is an industry stooge. President Obama’s nominee to oversee the American coal mining industry is Joseph Pizarchik, Pennsylvania’s top environmental official for mining since 2002.

   “Pizarchik’s office, the Bureau of Mining and Reclamation for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, has drawn fire in the past for taking steps that activists and others said limited public input on controversial mining projects… Activists also object to Pizarchik’s support of disposing toxic ash from burned coal into Pennsylvania mines, which they say leads to poisoned streams and drinking water.”

   “The consensus among several current and former Office of Surface Mining employees was that Pizarchik was likely to speed approval for mining projects, not address environmental concerns, said Jeff Ruch of the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.”

3. McClatchy reports Older workers hang on to jobs longer because they have to.

   “Everyone is seeing huge increases in unemployment – people dropping out of the labor force across the board – but older workers have seen a big increase in labor-force participation since the start of the recession. And I think it has a lot to do with declining retirement security,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group.

   A close look at work force data reveals that when the recession began in December 2007, workers 55 and older constituted 18 percent of the labor market. Today, they make up more than 19 percent. That means more Americans are working well into what would have been retirement, by choice and, increasingly, by necessity…

   “For older people right now, the crisis is not jobs, it is wealth,” Shierholz said. “They thought they had money tied up in their homes, and that’s gone or halved. If they have a 401(k), they’ve also seen a decline there … they are simply not leaving the labor force. In fact, they are still coming in.”

4. The Hill reports Harry Reid opposes democratic elections for senate vacancies. “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that he will oppose an effort to require that Senate vacancies be filled by election instead of gubernatorial appointment… Earlier in the day, the Senate Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee advanced a proposed constitutional amendment sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) to require that Senate vacancies be filled by direct elections.”

   “I’m not in favor of our dictating to a state what it should do,” Reid told reporters. “We have a system now where some states have special elections and some have governors appoint.

1. The NY Times reports Obama tries to put a brighter face on the economy. The White House is trying happy talk to persuade Americans that a jobless recovery means the U.S. economy is getting better. Though, “double-digit unemployment could be a psychological threshold with political ramifications for Mr. Obama.”

   “In January, the Obama team predicted that unemployment would remain at 8 percent or lower in 2009 if the recovery bill passed.” Last month, Vice President Biden admitted the Obama Team “misread how bad the economy was” at the start of the year. The White House argues, however, that without Obama’s reward-the-rich economic policies, the economy “could be worse”.

2. McClatchy reports Most of the U.S. is ill prepared to help children in disasters, says Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Craig Fugate. “We’ve historically looked at special populations as an afterthought,” Fugate said. “Children are not small adults.”

   “The worst prepared states, which had few or none of those plans, include Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana and Missouri, as well as the District of Columbia.”

3. AP reports that Small Pacific islands call for big carbon cuts. Seven Pacific island nations say the world must cut by 45 percent by 2020, or their nations will be lost to rising sea levels.

   “The group of seven small countries – the Cook Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Niue, Palau and Tuvalu – adopted the position of the global Association of Small Islands States that asks developed nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent by 2020 and 85 percent by 2050.”

   The Sydney Morning Herald adds Australian Prime Minister Kevin “Rudd said he was shocked to hear from regional leaders of coastal villages already being abandoned and farmland and water supplies destroyed by rising salt water.”

   The IPS reports Oxfam Australia predicts 8 million climate refugees as the island nations succumb to the rising seas. “Climate change could produce eight million refugees in the Pacific Islands, along with 75 million refugees in the Asia Pacific region in the next 40 years”.

4. The NY Times reports China seeks climate accord without strict limits. China is “the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide” and “together, China and the United States account for about 40 percent of pollutants linked to climate change.”

   Yu Qingtai, China’s climate envoy, “underscored China’s opposition to placing a ceiling on its emissions of greenhouse gases… Limiting China’s development would hamstring efforts to raise its living standards closer to a level that the developed world… China has proposed that the developed world commit to cutting its greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020.”

   “The developed countries, in realizing their industrialization, have discharged a large amount of greenhouse gases in the course of one or two centuries,” he said. “The cumulative emissions by the developed countries have caused global warming. Who should take the historical responsibilities?”

1. The NY Times reports Higher costs spur the rise in U.S. consumer spending. “While consumers spent more in June, they did so because prices of food and energy were rising, and not because they were ready to spend freely again. Personal incomes sagged as employers continued to cut wages and reduce working hours. And the personal saving rate, which had been rising, dropped sharply from a month earlier”.

   Meanwhile, Team Obama continues to wage the class war against the middle class. The CS Monitor reports Mixed signals from Obama team on middle class taxes. Obama’s economic advisors are considering breaking the president’s campaign pledge of no tax increases for those making $250,000 and under.

   In a televised interview on ABC on Sunday, Secretary Geithner talked about the need to make “hard choices” to rein in federal budget deficits. And the president’s top economic policy adviser, Larry Summers, said on CBS that healthcare reform will cost money, and “it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out.”

   The Hill adds Labor unions and liberal activists criticize breaking Obama’s campaign promise.

   Obama pledged during his White House campaign not to raise “one dime” of taxes on Americans earning below $250,000 a year.

   “If you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increased by a single dime. Not your income tax. Not your payroll tax. Not your capital gains tax. No tax,” Obama vowed.

   “It’s a pretty important campaign promise,” said Thea Lee, policy director at the AFL-CIO. But, still Team Obama and Congressional Democrats led by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) are floating a plan to tax employer-provided health benefits as opposed to increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Geithner and Summers are in the White House advocating for their rich friends, while the rest of America still continues to hurt.

   The Washington Post reports For many Americans, there’s nowhere to go but down and the NY Times adds a person’s Income loss persists long after layoffs.

   Economists, in fact, say income losses for workers who are let go in a recession can persist for as long as two decades, a depressing prognosis for the several-million people who have lost their jobs in the current recession.

2. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News reports Antidepressant use in U.S. doubled over decade to 10% in 2005. “The number of Americans taking antidepressants doubled to 10.1 percent of the U.S. population in 2005 compared with 1996, increasing across income and age groups… An estimated 27 million U.S. people ages 6 and older were taking the drugs by 2005… according to Columbia University research.”

   Coincidently surely, the LA Times reports Obama gives powerful drug lobby a seat at healthcare table. “As a candidate for president, Barack Obama lambasted drug companies and the influence they wielded in Washington. He even ran a television ad targeting the industry’s chief lobbyist, former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, and the role Tauzin played in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices.”

   Now, Tauzin is Obama’s partner having been to the White House at least 6 times and where he says he’s “secured an agreement that the administration wouldn’t try to overturn the very Medicare drug policy that Obama had criticized on the campaign trail.”

   “Drug companies — Washington’s leading source of lobbyist money — now have ‘a seat at the table’ at the White House and on Capitol Hill as healthcare legislation works its way through Congress.” Six months ago, Obama “criticized drug companies for greed now praises their work on behalf of the public good.”

   Meanwhile, The Hill reports Liberals protest Speaker Pelosi’s comments on health deal. Pelosi (D-CA) said to reporters on Friday: “Are you asking me, ‘Are progressives going to vote against universal, quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans?’? No way.” Her response triggered laughter.

   The Congressional Progressive Caucus have formally protested her remarks. “Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) said Monday she was unhappy at the idea that liberals were being ‘laughed at’ and not taken seriously.” The Progressive Caucus has vowed to oppose legislation that weakens or excludes a public option for health care.

Four at Four continues with Guantanamo inmate trial proposal and Obama’s Appalachian apocalypse.

1. Spiegel reports Banks reopen the global casino. “Investment banks… are making serious money again, thanks in part to government aid… They are benefiting from the crisis they helped to create. As profits go up, so do salaries — only this time, it’s the taxpayers who are shouldering the risks.”

   The casino is open again, worldwide. Many investment banks are raking in massive profits once again, driving up risks and attracting talent with high salaries. It’s as if nothing had happened, and as if it hadn’t been precisely this type of behavior that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse last fall and then plunged the world economy into its worst crisis since World War II.

   The collapse of the financial system was averted, but only through colossal public spending, as governments bolstered ailing banks with loan guarantees and equity injections and central banks pumped billions in liquidity into the markets.

   But now that the worst seems to be over, banks are back to behaving the same way they did before the crisis. Even worse, thanks to government guarantees for the financial sector and cheap money from central banks, it has never been easier for banks to make money…

   “The taxpayer is paying for the chips in the casino,” the head of the German operations of an international investment bank says quite openly, but anonymously nevertheless. “It doesn’t get any better.” … Investment banks, for their part, have bought the securities with money they borrowed from central banks at ridiculously low rates.

   Meanwhile, the CS Monitor reports Fed chairman Ben Bernanke defends bailouts – and himself. “Bernanke’s term as chairman of the Federal Reserve expires at the end of January”. “He’s running to keep his office and defend the Fed,” says Robert Brusca of Fact & Opinion Economics in New York.

   Bernanke DOES NOT merit reappointment, but I doubt Obama sees it that way. Instead of Bernanke doesn’t get the nod, speculation is that Larry Summers, Obama’s economic policy head, will get the job, which, of course, will be even worse.

   For his part, Bernanke wants MORE power for the Federal Reserve. Last week, the AP reported Bernanke told the Senate a new consumer protection agency isn’t needed, because the Fed is doing such a good job protecting the consumer already.

   “Bernanke also said he did not think conflicts existed between the Fed’s consumer protection and bank oversight roles.” And the Independent reported that Bernanke warned against meddling with Fed. Bernanke doesn’t want legislation passed by Congress that “would subject the Fed’s actions in these areas to audits by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.”

   “Financial markets, in particular, likely would see a grant of review authority in these areas to the GAO as a serious weakening of monetary policy independence,” Bernanke said.

Four at Four continues with more banks behaving badly, Eric Holder, and calls for a Congressional inquiry into the CIA.

1. The World will warm faster than predicted in next five years reports The Guardian. “The world faces a new period of record-breaking temperatures as the sun’s activity increases, leading the planet to heat up significantly faster than scientists had predicted over the next five years, according to a new study… The new research suggests, temperatures will shoot up at 150% of the rate predicted by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

   The research, to be published in a forthcoming edition of Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Judith Lean of the US Naval Research Laboratory and David Rind of Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Lean said: “Our paper shows that the absence of warming observed in the last decade is no evidence that the climate isn’t responding to man-made greenhouse gases. On the contrary, the study again confirms that we’re seeing a long-term warming trend driven by human activity, with natural factors affecting the precise shape of that temperature rise.”

   Yesterday Edger noted that the The Observer had published Secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide.

   

   Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months. The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week.”

Four at Four continues the Army farming in Afghanistan, an update from Pakistan, China shaping the 21st century, and dams versus fish.

1. The LA Times reports the U.S. stops giving militant death tolls in Afghanistan. “U.S. military officials in Afghanistan have halted the practice of releasing the number of militants killed in fighting with American-led forces as part of an overall strategy shift that emphasizes concern for the local civilian population’s well-being rather than hunting insurgent groups.”

   Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald reports Australian troops are given lighter armour after fatal Afghan battle. “Lighter armour has been issued to front-line Australian troops in Afghanistan after soldiers caught in a fatal Taliban ambush said their protective gear limited movement.”

   Elsewhere, the NY Times reports a Rival to Karzai gains strength in Afghan presidential election. Dr. Abdullah Abdullah “has started his campaign late, but in its first two weeks he has canvassed six provinces and drawn growing support and larger crowds than expected. Rapturous welcomes like this one have suddenly elevated him to the status of potential future president.”

   “I have no doubt that people want change,” Dr. Abdullah said in an interview after a tumultuous day campaigning in Herat, in western Afghanistan, adding that his momentum was just building. “Today they are hopeful that change can come.”

2. McClatchy reports the Pakistan offensive failed to dislodge Taliban, residents say. “Taliban Islamists, whose announced goal is to topple the nuclear-armed Pakistani government, continue to maintain a menacing presence in Buner, a district northwest of Islamabad, the capital, that the army says it’s cleared of militants, according to recently returned residents.”

   The CS Monitor adds the Delayed offensive in South Waziristan wears at Pakistan’s antiterror credibility. “Doubts are mounting that the Pakistani military will launch a promised ground offensive into the Taliban heartland of South Waziristan. The prolonged delay is threatening Pakistan’s already shaky credibility on battling Islamic militants in its territory.” Pakistan has been ‘softening up’ the Taliban for more than a month now.

   U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke is giving Pakistan the benefit of any doubt. “I think they’ve got their hands full in Swat and Buner,” said Holbrooke. “They’ve got to make sure when the refugees come back that they have security, so maybe they’re delaying the offensive.”

   Meanwhile, Spiegel Online reports Pakistan consumed by violence as Taliban power grows. “The Taliban’s power in Pakistan continues to grow and it now has entire towns under its control. Under US pressure, the Pakistani army is fighting the Islamists — with limited success. Pakistani intelligence says the Americans are doing more harm than good.”

Four at Four continues Goldman Sachs rigs Wall Street, Goldman Sachs guts climate bill, Florida fish die from heat stroke, and AIDS-like disease discovered in chimpanzees.

1. The Washington Independent reports Iraqi prime minister is open to renegotiating withdrawal timeline. “Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki opened the door for the first time Thursday to the prospect of a U.S. military presence in Iraq after the December 2011 deadline for troop withdrawal set by last year’s bilateral accord – something President Obama appeared to rule out during a joint appearance on Tuesday.”

   “Maliki said the accord, known as the Status of Forces Agreement, would ‘end’ the American military presence in his country in 2011, but ‘nevertheless, if Iraqi forces required further training and further support, we shall examine this at that time based on the needs of Iraq'”.

   “‘The nature of that relationship – the functions and the amount of [U.S.] forces – will then be discussed and reexamined based on the needs'” of Iraq”, he added.

2. Bloomberg reports the Obama administration is accused by lawyers of stonewalling on terror questioning. Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay prisoners say the Obama administration is not keeping the president’s campaign pledge of transparency. “The attorneys said government officials have been no more helpful than the Bush administration in sharing transcripts of interrogations of their clients. The detainees may have been subject to harsh methods and possibly torture, the lawyers said.”

   If details of the interrogations become public, they could weaken support for the U.S. fight against Islamic militants, said Philip Heymann, a professor at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

   Any revelations about prisoner mistreatment “would make the public more suspicious about the war on terrorism,” said Heymann, deputy attorney general under President Bill Clinton.

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports a U.S. judge challenges evidence on a detainee.

   The Obama administration has until Friday to decide whether to continue to defend the six-year imprisonment of an Afghan at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who was a teenager when he came into American hands.

   The decision was prompted by Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle of Federal District Court, who last week criticized the government’s case against the detainee as “an outrage” that was “riddled with holes.” Judge Huvelle’s comments, made at a hearing in district court in Washington, were not reported at the time.

   The detainee, Mohammed Jawad, … was tortured by Afghan officials before he was turned over to American forces in 2002 and was later abused at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay…

   Military records show that Mr. Jawad was subjected to a sleep deprivation program in which he was moved from cell to cell 112 times in a 13-day period and that he was isolated, beaten and kicked by guards at Guantánamo. He attempted suicide in Guantánamo in 2003.

Four at Four continues with an update from Afghanistan, toucans and their amazing radiator bills, caribou collapse, and baseball.

1. The Hill reports Pentagon propaganda blitz didn’t break rules, says Government Accountability Office.

   The Department of Defense (DOD) did not violate ethics rules by encouraging retired military officers to appear on news programs as media analysts in the buildup to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new government report…

   “Clearly, DOD attempted to favorably influence public opinion with respect to the [George W. Bush] administration’s war policies in Iraq and Afghanistan through the” retired military officers, wrote Daniel Gordon, GAO’s acting general counsel, in the report…

   None of those activities violated statutes, however, because products given to the retired officers were clearly marked as Defense Department materials, GAO found. Further, the Pentagon did not pay for favorable coverage it received.

2. The Washington Post reports U.S. deaths hit a record high in Afghanistan. “So far this month, 31 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, surpassing the record of 28 deaths in June 2008. Losses for the entire NATO-led coalition, including British, Canadian, Dutch and other forces, have also spiked this month, feeding growing unease over the war in those countries.”

   “Although U.S. Marines are in the midst of a major offensive in the south, American troops have suffered the heaviest losses in the east, where 16 U.S. soldiers have been killed this month. The vast majority of those fatalities have been caused by roadside bombs, which have grown increasingly sophisticated.”

   The LA Times adds the Taliban claims responsibility for new wave of attacks in Afghanistan. The Taliban said it was responsible for coordinated, “commando-style assaults in the provincial capitals of Jalalabad and Gardez, targeting a U.S. military base and several Afghan government compounds” that “demonstrated the insurgents’ ability to mount sophisticated, multi-pronged attacks over a wide geographical area.”

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Pakistan objects to the U.S. plan for its Afghan war. “Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan”. Pakistan fears “the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan”.

   Pakistan doesn’t have enough troops to guard the Baluchistan-border and its border with India. So, once again, Pakistanis say “dialogue with the Taliban, not more fighting, is in Pakistan’s national interest”.

   The LA Times notes that Waziristan a tough nut for Pakistani forces. Two Pakistani military offenses in recent years failed to eliminate the Taliban from South Waziristan. “And now, as Pakistani generals brace again for war in South Waziristan, the Taliban militants there are tougher and greater in number than their brethren on the run from the military in the country’s volatile Swat Valley”.

   “Waziristan’s desolate plateaus, caves and roadless basins provide an ideal battlefield for guerrilla fighters like the Taliban — and a no man’s land for a conventional force like Pakistan’s military, which relies on helicopter gunships, fighter jets and heavy artillery. Military convoys moving along the few roads in Waziristan are likely to be easy targets for ambushes from surrounding hillsides.”

Four at Four continues with pot tax in Oakland, ore shipments in Duluth/Superior, and Congress pushing to combine church with state.