Tag: 4@4

1. The Guardian reports David Sandalow, the assistant secretary of state for energy, claims China alone could bring world to brink of climate calamity.

   “China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change,” Sandalow said. He claimed if China continues business as usual, then that would “result in a 2.7C rise in global temperatures by 2050 even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80%.”

   China’s position is the U.S. and other long-established industrialized nations “should cut emissions by 40% between 1990 and 2020, as well as paying 1% of their GDP to help poorer nations deal with the consequences and causes of climate change.”

   The Washington Post adds the U.S. and China are at odds over emissions. “Senior U.S. and Chinese officials began three days of talks here Monday in hopes of making a breakthrough on climate change, but they remain far apart on the basic issue of who is to blame for carbon emissions and should shoulder the biggest burden for reducing them.”

Four at Four continues with an update from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region, Peruvian indigenous leader Alberto Pizango seeks asylum, the power-grip of Ivy League schools over the Supreme Court, and the Obama administration defends torture cover-up and secrecy.

World spends wastes $1.46 trillion on M-I-C in 2008

1. The Guardian reports Global military spending hits record levels and the United States accounts for more than half the total increase. Overall, the U.S. accounted for 42 percent of the world’s total military spending at $607 billion. China has the second highest amount of military expenditures at $84.9 billion.

   “Global military expenditure has risen by 45% over the past decade to $1.46tn, according to the latest annual Yearbook on Armaments, Disarmament, and International Security published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri).”

   BBC News adds Military spending sets new record. “In contrast with civilian aerospace and airlines, the defence industry remains healthy… In total, the 100 leading defence manufacturers sold arms worth $347bn during 2007, the most recent year for which reliable data are available. Almost all the companies were American or European. Some 61% of the total was accounted for by 44 US companies, with 32 West European companies accounting for a further 31%. Other companies were Russian, Japanese, Israeli and Indian.”

2. The NY Times reports Supreme Court tells elected judges not to rule on major backers.

   In a closely watched case involving the confluence of justice, politics and money, the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that the Constitution can require an elected judge to step aside in a particular case based on campaign spending in state judicial races.

   In a 5-to-4 decision released on Monday, the high court found that the circumstances surrounding Justice Brent D. Benjamin of the West Virginia Supreme Court and a lawsuit involving the Massey Energy Company, his major campaign contributor, were so “extreme” that there was no question that Justice Benjamin should have disqualified himself…

   “The facts now before us are extreme by any measure,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. “The parties point to no other instance involving judicial campaign contributions that presents a potential for bias comparable to the circumstances in this case.”

   Since judges may be influenced by large campaign contributions, why are politicians immune? Why should elected politicians be allowed to sponsor and vote on legislation on behalf of their major campaign contributors?

Four at Four continues with analysis on Pakistan, trouble for trust-funders, and why the private health insurance wants mandatory insurance.

1. The CS Monitor reports Another tough summer for Arctic sea ice is likely. According to the June 1 readings posted by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this year’s annual melt-back of Arctic Ocean sea ice may break the 2007 record. “NSIDC researchers say they expect 2009 to be another year when the amount of sea ice left at summer’s end will fall short of the 1979-2000 average.”

   And according to a recent study published in Geophysical Research Letters, Winter Northern Hemisphere weather patterns remember summer Arctic sea-ice extent (pdf). So, the loss of Arctic ice in the summer means much less fall and winter rain and snow in Norther Europe, Alaska, and the parched Western U.S.

   Meanwhile back in Washington, D.C., American industry lobbies Congress for permission to pollute more, according to the Washington Post. U.S. oil refiners are seeking special cap-and-trade allowances that could be worth millions of dollars.

   Led by Rep. Gene Green (D-TX), oil refiners amended the pending climate change legislation to “give petroleum refiners valuable rights to emit carbon dioxide when it otherwise might not have been allowed. Refiners could get the extra allowances in return for cutting carbon emissions by 50 percent at a single point of a vast refinery complex instead of slashing emissions by 50 percent for the entire facility.”

   In addition, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) had inserted a change that “would give the auto industry $1.4 billion worth of extra allowances”. Coal industry lobbyists are also working to weaken then bill. Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) “led the effort to protect coal-fired utilities and mining firms.” 35 percent of the allowances are going to the coal power industry.

Four at Four continues with enriching the rich by eliminating jobs in America, an update from Pakistan, the “most serious threat to American wildlife in the past century”, and a better levee system for New Orleans found in the Netherlands.

50 years of climate change in the Himalayas captured on camera

1. The Guardian reports in 50 years the Imja glacier in the Himalayas has been transformed by a warming climate from millennia-old glacial ice to a glacial lake. American mountain geographer Alton Byers returned to the place where Fritz Müller and Erwin Schneider once battled ice storms to take new panoramic photos of the glacier.

   

   “The 1956 photograph of the Imja glacier, then one of the largest glaciers at an altitude of around 5,000m, shows a layer of thick ice with small meltwater ponds. But by the time Byers took his shot in 2007, much of the glacier had melted into a vast but stunning blue lake. Today, the Imja glacier, which is just 6km from Everest, continues to recede at a rate of 74m a year – the fastest rate of all the Himalayan glaciers.”

Four at Four continues with court review of warrantless eavesdropping, undoing Bush-era policy on deportation, and the possibility of a U.S.-China climate deal.

1. The NY Times reports a U.S. report finds errors in Afghan airstrikes. “A military investigation has concluded that American personnel made significant errors in carrying out some of the airstrikes in western Afghanistan on May 4 that killed dozens of Afghan civilians, according to a senior American military official.”

   “Had the rules been followed, at least some of the strikes by American warplanes against half a dozen targets over seven hours would have been aborted. The report represents the clearest American acknowledgment of fault in connection with the attacks.“

Four at Four continues with Cheney oversaw torture Congressional briefings, Iraq halts cleaning up unexploded ordinance, and green energy investment passses fossil fuel investment.

1. Politico reports Pentagon budget faces shortfall The Obama administration “understated the military’s true personnel costs when the president submitted his war funding request in April… “The Pentagon said Monday it now estimates it faces an additional $2.35 billion shortfall in personnel accounts for the remainder of this fiscal year ending Sept. 30. Nearly three-quarters of the money would go to the Army and Army National Guard, which have blown far past their 2009 manpower targets, thanks to a bad economy and a system of often costly enlistment bonuses.”

Four at Four continues with Obama in Egypt, how we’re losing the war in Afghanistan, and Pakistan frees cleric allegedly linked to Mumbai terrorist attacks.

1. The LA Times reports Iraqi casualties fall to record low in May. “The death toll for the month, 165, is about half that of April. Meanwhile, 24 American military personnel were killed, an eight-month high… According to Iraq’s Interior Ministry, 165 Iraqis died in violence in May, 134 of them civilians and 31 of them members of the Iraqi security forces.”

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan, Geithner in China, and bumblebee extinction.

1. The Guardian reports Global warming causes 300,000 deaths a year, says Kofi Annan thinktank.

   Climate change is already responsible for 300,000 deaths a year and is affecting 300m people, according to the first comprehensive study of the human impact of global warming.

   It projects that increasingly severe heatwaves, floods, storms and forest fires will be responsible for as many as 500,000 deaths a year by 2030, making it the greatest humanitarian challenge the world faces.

   Economic losses due to climate change today amount to more than $125bn a year – more than all the present world aid. The report comes from former UN secretary general Kofi Annan’s thinktank, the Global Humanitarian Forum. By 2030, the report says, climate change could cost $600bn a year.

   Civil unrest may also increase because of weather-related events, the report says: “Four billion people are vulnerable now and 500m are now at extreme risk. Weather-related disasters … bring hunger, disease, poverty and lost livelihoods. They pose a threat to social and political stability”.

2. Nature News reports Geological survey quantifies undiscovered gas and oil in the Arctic. “Around a third of the world’s yet-to-be discovered gas resources and 13% of its undiscovered oil reserves may lie north of the Arctic Circle,” according to research published in Science. The results “fills in details of preliminary mapping results announced last year by the US Geological Survey”.

   The estimates are based purely on geological data, and take no account of whether the oil and gas stores are technically recoverable or how much it would cost to exploit them. Nor do they address the environmental and cultural damage that might be inflicted by attempting to drill for oil or gas. Nonetheless, claims Donald Gautier, who led the research, “they give us insight into future petroleum resources, political relations, and places that environmental conflicts may occur”.

   The LA Times adds Arctic fossil fuel estimates are small in comparision. “The estimate is relatively small compared with known reserves in the major oil-exporting countries, but it is likely to greatly benefit Russia, which has the largest territory in the region, the researchers noted. However, they said, the most likely place for oil in the Arctic is off northern Alaska in the Chukchi Sea.”

   McClatchy notes that One-fifth of the estimated 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in the world live on the coast of Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas. “Two-thirds of the world’s polar bears, including those along the coasts of Alaska and Russia, are projected to disappear” due to the “loss of vast expanses of polar sea ice” caused by climate change.

Four at Four continues with a timeout for wilderness exploitation, hard times for organic dairies, and Doctor Who squeeeee!

1. The LA Times reports the FBI is planning a bigger role in terrorism fight.

   The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

   Under the “global justice” initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

2. The NY Times reports 29 militants killed in Afghanistan. “American and Afghan forces backed by airstrikes engaged in a ‘fierce firefight’ with Taliban insurgents in a remote and mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least 29 militants in an effort to capture” Mullah Sangeen, a “‘fairly significant’ commander of the Haqqani network, a radical group headed by Taliban commander Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani that is believed to be behind some of the largest attacks in recent years.”

   The military claimed “no noncombatants were injured during this operation”. While “a Taliban spokesman… gave a vastly different account of the battle, saying that its militants had killed 15 coalition forces and captured four Afghan police officers.” He claimed no Taliban fighters had been killed.

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan and John Kerry’s take on U.S.-China climate negotiations.

1. Reuters reports Iraq starts oil exports from Kurdistan. “Iraq started exporting oil from its largely autonomous Kurdistan region for the first time on Wednesday, Iraq’s Oil Ministry said, in an apparent breakthrough after years of deadlock over disputed Kurdish oil contracts.” The oil is flowing over pipelines to the “Turkish port of Ceyhan at an initial test rate of 10,000 barrels per day”.

   The Financial Times adds Baghdad may yet fulfill its potential. “After almost 40 years of exile, international oil companies are about to return to Iraq. For companies such as BP, Shell, Total and ExxonMobil, Iraq represents the biggest opportunity in decades.”

   A reason for war? “International groups have been short of opportunities to tap easy oil as oil-rich countries have closed their borders to them and relied on their own national companies and on service contractors”.

   Meanwhile, the NY Times reports “A roadside bomb killed three Americans traveling in Falluja,” including State Department official Terrence Barnich, the deputy director of the Iraq Transition Assistance Office in Baghdad. “The attack also killed an American soldier and a civilian working for the Defense Department.” The AP adds May was “the deadliest month for the American military since September.”

Four at Four continues with CO2 emissions, national security changes, and Sotomayor is the antithesis of the Republicans’ “stealth candidate”.

1. The Washington Post reports a Showdown looms on use of ‘state secrets’. Despite promises by President Obama to limit the use of “state secrets”, the Department of Justice is being criticized by “a federal judge in California overseeing a case that has delved deeper than any other into one of the government’s most highly classified data-gathering programs.”

   The Obama administration has invoked the state-secrets privilege in resisting a lawsuit filed by an Oregon charity whose attorneys may have been subjected to warrantless wiretapping. Late Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker issued a terse order that raised the prospect of “sanctions” for government lawyers who have not responded to his order for a plan for how the case should proceed. The sanctions may include awarding monetary damages to the charity, the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation…

   The Haramain case is one of the national security battles left over from George W. Bush’s presidency. Civil liberties groups and left-leaning members of Congress have used the matter to argue that Obama’s approach as president conflicts with his campaign promises of transparency.

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan, bombing deaths in Afghanistan, and a surge in Social Security claims.

1. The NY Times reports President Obama sends an additional wreath to mark Memorial Day. In addition to placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, Obama “sent a second wreath to a memorial honoring African-Americans who fought in the Civil War.”

   “Last week, a group of university professors petitioned the White House to end a longstanding practice of sending a wreath to a monument to Confederate soldiers on the cemetery grounds. Mr. Obama continued that tradition but started another, the White House said, by sending a second wreath across the Potomac River to the historically black neighborhood in Washington where the African-American Civil War Memorial commemorates more than 200,000 blacks who fought for the North in the Civil War.”

2. The Washington Post reports Threats to U.S. judges and prosecutors are soaring.

   Threats against the nation’s judges and prosecutors have sharply increased, prompting hundreds to get 24-hour protection from armed U.S. marshals. Many federal judges are altering their routes to work, installing security systems at home, shielding their addresses by paying bills at the courthouse or refraining from registering to vote. Some even pack weapons on the bench…

   The threats and other harassing communications against federal court personnel have more than doubled in the past six years, from 592 to 1,278, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. Worried federal officials blame disgruntled defendants whose anger is fueled by the Internet; terrorism and gang cases that bring more violent offenders into federal court; frustration at the economic crisis; and the rise of the “sovereign citizen” movement — a loose collection of tax protesters, white supremacists and others who don’t respect federal authority.

Four at Four continues with an update from Pakistan and tracking toxins in eaglets.