Global carbon emissions reach record, says IEA

May 31st, 2011

Energy-related carbon emissions reached a record level last year, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The watchdog says emissions rose again after a dip caused by the financial crisis in 2009, and ended 5% up from the previous record in 2008.

China and India account for most of the rise, though emissions have also grown in developed countries.

The increase raises doubts over whether planned curbs on greenhouse emissions will be achieved, the group says.

At a meeting last year in Cancun, Mexico, world leaders agreed that deep cuts were needed to limit the rise in global temperature to 2C above pre-industrial levels.

But according to the IEA’s estimate, worldwide CO2 emissions from the energy sector reached a record 30.6 gigatonnes in 2010.

The IEA’s Fatih Birol said the finding was “another wake-up call”.

“The world has edged incredibly close to the level of emissions that should not be reached until 2020 if the 2C target is to be attained,” he added.

“Unless bold and decisive decisions are made very soon, it will be extremely challenging to succeed in achieving this global goal agreed in Cancun.

– To the original:  ➡

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, The Perfect Storm, Weather deterioration | No Comments »

As pollution soars, cancer is now the leading cause of death in China

May 30th, 2011

The Earth Policy Institute reported on figures today showing that cancer is now the leading cause of death in China, accounting for a quarter of all deaths in the country. The most common type? Lung cancer – caused in large part by increasingly foul air due to a heavy reliance on coal:

Deaths from this typically fatal disease have shot up nearly fivefold since the 1970s. In China’s rapidly growing cities, like Shanghai and Beijing, where particulates in the air are often four times higher than in New York City, nearly 30 percent of cancer deaths are from lung cancer.

The figures, which were compiled from the Chinese Ministry of Health, show the other side of China’s rush to develop new sources of energy.  In the case of lung cancer, the bad air is compounded by soaring tobacco use.

The Chinese are, rightfully, seen as aggressively pursuing leadership in clean energy, while America falls behind.  (I’ve used it to frame the debate too – and given how fast China is building projects and growing its manufacturing base, Americans better pay attention.)

But that comparison often ignores the broader picture in the country. Sure, China is beating us in wind installations and has a leg up in solar manufacturing; but in a country building a new coal plant every other week, any environmental and health impact of developing renewable energy is being negated by such a heavy reliance on dirty energy. Or, as the Earth Policy Institute so bluntly puts it: “China is sacrificing the health of its people, ultimately risking future prosperity” (and that’s on top of the devastation that awaits China from unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases).

While official rhetoric recognizes the importance of preserving the environment and the health of its people, the Chinese government still has a long way to go in bolstering transparency and enforcement of even the existing environmental regulations, not to mention strengthening protection. If it does not do so, the country’s toxic burden threatens to stall or even reverse the dramatic health gains of the last 60 years, which raised average life expectancy from 45 to 74 years and slashed infant mortality from 122 deaths per 1,000 births down to 20. Economic gains could be lost as productivity wanes and massive health bills come due. Ultimately, a sick country can prosper only so long.

– More… ➡

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Posted in Capitalism & Corporations, CrashBlogging, Human Rights, Mental Irrationality, Pollution, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

TV boss Muzzammil Hassan found guilty of beheading wife

May 19th, 2011

– Wrote about this a few months ago.   Very strange.

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A New York television executive has been convicted of stabbing his wife to death and beheading her.

A jury found Pakistan-born Muzzammil Hassan guilty of second-degree murder in the 2009 death of Aasiya Hassan six days after she filed for divorce.

Hassan never denied killing her but said she had abused him and that he had acted in self-defence. He served as his own lawyer during the three-week trial.

Hassan, who founded a Muslim-oriented TV network, could face life in prison.

Prosecutors argued Hassan abused his wife and planned the attack in a hallway at Bridges TV, a satellite channel he set up in 2004 in an effort to counter negative portrayals of Muslims following the 9/11 terror attacks.

– More… ➡

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youtube video on Peak Oil

May 19th, 2011

– A friend sent me this link and I found it interesting.   It’s saying what people have been saying now for years; that Peak Oil is real and it’s coming.   Except, that this is showing good reasons to believe that we are fully into the peak now and that by 2013 or 2014, we’ll be to the point where demand is outstripping supply and prices will begin a strong and inexorable rise.

– If you watch this and think to yourself that it’s just a one-off alarmist piece, then remember that this is just one of a long chain of such pieces and, as time has gone on, the predictions of the previous pieces have each been borne out – even though people were laughing at them as well at the time.

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Click here to see the video:  ➡

– research thanks to Johnathan S.

Posted in CrashBlogging, Mental Irrationality, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Four arrested after Bangladesh girl ‘lashed to death

May 17th, 2011

Four people including a Muslim cleric have been arrested in Bangladesh in connection with the death of 14-year-old girl who was publicly lashed.

The teenager was accused of having an affair with a married man, police say, and the punishment was given under Islamic Sharia law.

Hena Begum’s family members said a village court consisting of elders and clerics passed the sentence.

She was alleged to have had the affair with her cousin and received 80 lashes.

Punishment received

The family members of the married man also allegedly beat the girl up a day before the village court passed the sentence in the district of Shariatpur.

“Her family members said she was admitted to a hospital after the incident and she died six days later. The village elders also asked the girl’s father to pay a fine of about 50,000 Taka (£430; $700),” district superintendent of police, AKM Shahidur Rahman, told the BBC.

He said it had not been established yet whether she died because of the punishment she received or another reason.

“We are still waiting for the post-mortem report. In the meantime, we are also looking for another 14 people including a teacher from a local madrassa in connection with this case,” Mr Rahman said.

Activists say dozens of fatwas – or religious rulings – are issued under Sharia law each year by village clergy in Bangladesh.

“What sort of justice is this? My daughter has been beaten to death in the name of justice. If it had been a proper court then my daughter would not have died,” Dorbesh Khan, the father of Hena Begum, told the BBC.

– More… ➡

– And then later this:

A Bangladeshi girl who was publicly whipped for an alleged affair with a married man bled to death, according to a fresh post-mortem examination.

Doctors in Dhaka found multiple injuries on the body of Hena Begum, the deputy attorney general told the BBC.

The High Court ordered her body to be exhumed and taken to the capital after a local autopsy recorded no injuries.

Miss Begum died in hospital six days after last month’s beating, which has caused shock in Bangladesh and abroad.

Police have opened a murder investigation.

– More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Human Rights, The Perfect Storm, Women's Rights | No Comments »

American Psychosis: What happens to a society that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion?…

May 16th, 2011

By: Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, is the author of severalbooks including the best sellers War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. . . .

—

The United States, locked in the kind of twilight disconnect that grips dying empires, is a country entranced by illusions. It spends its emotional and intellectual energy on the trivial and the absurd. It is captivated by the hollow stagecraft of celebrity culture as the walls crumble. This celebrity culture giddily licenses a dark voyeurism into other people’s humiliation, pain, weakness and betrayal. Day after day, one lurid saga after another, whether it is Michael Jackson, Britney Spears or John Edwards, enthralls the country … despite bank collapses, wars, mounting poverty or the criminality of its financial class.

The virtues that sustain a nation-state and build community, from honesty to self-sacrifice to transparency to sharing, are ridiculed each night on television as rubes stupid enough to cling to this antiquated behavior are voted off reality shows. Fellow competitors for prize money and a chance for fleeting fame, cheered on by millions of viewers, elect to “disappear” the unwanted. In the final credits of the reality show America’s Next Top Model, a picture of the woman expelled during the episode vanishes from the group portrait on the screen. Those cast aside become, at least to the television audience, nonpersons. Celebrities that can no longer generate publicity, good or bad, vanish. Life, these shows persistently teach, is a brutal world of unadulterated competition and a constant quest for notoriety and attention.

Our culture of flagrant self-exaltation, hardwired in the American character, permits the humiliation of all those who oppose us. We believe, after all, that because we have the capacity to wage war we have a right to wage war. Those who lose deserve to be erased. Those who fail, those who are deemed ugly, ignorant or poor, should be belittled and mocked. Human beings are used and discarded like Styrofoam boxes that held junk food. And the numbers of superfluous human beings are swelling the unemployment offices, the prisons and the soup kitchens.

It is the cult of self that is killing the United States. This cult has within it the classic traits of psychopaths: superficial charm, grandiosity and self-importance; a need for constant stimulation; a penchant for lying, deception and manipulation; and the incapacity for remorse or guilt. Michael Jackson, from his phony marriages to the portraits of himself dressed as royalty to his insatiable hunger for new toys to his questionable relationships with young boys, had all these qualities. And this is also the ethic promoted by corporations. It is the ethic of unfettered capitalism. It is the misguided belief that personal style and personal advancement, mistaken for individualism, are the same as democratic equality. It is the nationwide celebration of image over substance, of illusion over truth. And it is why investment bankers blink in confusion when questioned about the morality of the billions in profits they made by selling worthless toxic assets to investors.

– More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Culture - How not to do it, Mental Irrationality, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

As Time Goes By, It Gets Tougher to Remember New Information

May 16th, 2011

ScienceDaily (May 13, 2011) — It’s something we just accept: the fact that the older we get, the more difficulty we seem to have remembering things. We can leave our cars in the same parking lot each morning, but unless we park in the same space each and every day, it’s a challenge eight hours later to recall whether we left the SUV in the second or fifth row. Or, we can be introduced to new colleagues at a meeting and will have forgotten their names before the handshake is over. We shrug and nervously reassure ourselves that our brains’ “hard drives” are just too full to handle the barrage of new information that comes in daily.

According to a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist, however, the real trouble is that our aging brains are unable to process this information as “new” because the brain pathways leading to the hippocampus — the area of the brain that stores memories — become degraded over time. As a result, our brains cannot accurately “file” new information (like where we left the car that particular morning), and confusion results.

“Our research uses brain imaging techniques that investigate both the brain’s functional and structural integrity to demonstrate that age is associated with a reduction in the hippocampus’s ability to do its job, and this is related to the reduced input it is getting from the rest of the brain,” said Michael Yassa, assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences in Johns Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. “As we get older, we are much more susceptible to ‘interference’ from older memories than we are when we are younger.”

– More… ➡

– Research thanks to Alan T.

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Scientists’ Report Stresses Urgency of Limiting

May 14th, 2011

– Would you, dear readers, be more impressed if I also went back and provided links for the last three or four times that such warnings have been issued; each with more stridency?    I could, you know.

– I/we just keep watching these warnings go by.

– And then one day, we’ll all hear it said, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?   Why didn’t anyone do anything to prevent all this?”  Why, indeed.

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The nation’s scientific establishment issued a stark warning to the American public on Thursday: Not only is global warming real, but the effects are already becoming serious and the need has become “pressing” for a strong national policy to limit emissions of heat-trapping gases.

The report, by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, did not endorse any specific legislative approach, but it did say that attaching some kind of price to emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, would ideally be an essential component of any plan.

“The risks associated with doing business as usual are a much greater concern than the risks associated with engaging in ambitious but measured response efforts,” the report concludes. “This is because many aspects of an ‘overly ambitious’ policy response could be reversed or otherwise addressed, if needed, through subsequent policy change, whereas adverse changes in the climate system are much more difficult (indeed, on the time scale of our lifetimes, may be impossible) to ‘undo.’ ”

The report, “America’s Climate Choices,” was ordered by Congress several years ago to offer “action-oriented advice” on how the nation should be reacting to the potential consequences of climate change.

But the answer comes at a time when efforts to adopt a climate-change policy have stalled in Washington, with many of the Republicans who control the House expressing open skepticism about the science of climate change. Other legislators, including some Democrats, worry that any new law would translate into higher energy prices and hurt the economy.

More… ➡

– Research Thanks to Robin S.

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Rising Ocean Levels, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Many Postpone Care

May 14th, 2011

– Oh, American healthcare, you make me so sad.  300 million people trapped in a system that has, itself, been captured by corporate interests who care for nothing but the maximization of their own profit.

– Dennis

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The nation’s major health insurers are barreling into a third year of record profits, enriched in recent months by a lingering recessionary mind-set among Americans who are postponing or forgoing medical care.

The UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest commercial insurers, told analysts that so far this year, insured hospital stays actually decreased in some instances. In reporting its earnings last week, Cigna, another insurer, talked about the “low level” of medical use.

Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends.

More… ➡

– Research thanks to Cara H.

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About Bin Laden…

May 7th, 2011

If killing Bin Laden is going to decrease the violence and the Al Qaida activity, then it’s probably a good thing. I personally don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference. And there was something disturbing to me about the cheering crowds and the national bloodlust/revenge mentality that ensued. Violence is violence. It’s a sad thing. They had to shoot him and kill him because there would be no way they could hold him in any kind of jail without the entire Muslim world either trying to spring him or making him a living martyr, or the white redneck right wing trying to execute him in ten thousand ways every single day. It would have been a public relations nightmare and a wordwide disaster. And not releasing the gruesome photos is a good decision. As Obama said, we don’t need to spike the football (or wave his scalp in front of the Muslim extremist world). The fact is the U.S. and the oil companies took over the Middle East many years ago and shoved in their own dictators and ‘Shahs’ and power brokers and pissed all over those ignorant ‘sand niggers’, ‘camel jockeys’, ‘diaper heads’, and ‘rug pilots’, and fucked them for years. Even up until today almost half the Egyptian population was living on $2.00 a day while Mubarak made off with a 70 billion dollar fortune. Hussein was a hero when he was on our side, but we killed him when he got too big for his britches and wanted Kuwait. But now those people have computers and TV and can see how the rest of the world lives and that women are not garbage, and that people in other countries have ‘human rights’ and don’t have to put up with the shit they have had to put up with for all these years. So, despite all the ‘altruism’ and flag waving and Bible thumping and cheering, at bottom the whole stinking mess comes back down to oil, power, greed (gas is right back up to $4.00 a gallon, as you may have noticed), corruption, and good old MONEY. (And I’m sure that if the Muslim world had had the power and technology, and the U.S. had the oil and the ignorance they would have fucked us the same way we have been fucking them, despite their ‘Koran’ and religious bullshit. People are people, unfortunately.)
And so it goes…………..”Civilization is the long process of learning to be kind”, as someone intelligent once said. And we have a hell of a long way to go.

Van

– This piece is by my friend, Van. An excellent writer and thinker who I think should have a blog of his own. But, until he does, I’ll be happy to repost his stuff here.

Posted in Guest Blogger, Politics | No Comments »

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