by John Atcheson, Cross Posted from Common Dreams
OK, lemmings don’t commit mass suicide. But they do reproduce chaotically, and periodically consume their way out of sustainable habitats, and into mass migrations that result in most of their population dying.
Sound familiar? We’re cavalierly headed for our own cliff – 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere sometime in the next couple of months, if not sooner.
The lemming has a brain the size of a pea. What’s our excuse?
from the Economic Times
BEIJING: About 90 per cent of glaciers in Tibet called the Third Pole region, are shrinking because of black carbon pollution “transferred from South Asia” to the Tibetan Plateau, a Chinese scientist has warned.
The Third Pole region, which is centred on the Tibetan Plateau and concerns the interests of the surrounding countries and regions, covers more than five million square kilometres and has an average altitude of more than 4,000 metres. Continue reading
by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News
[The text of this work is free to share and distribute under the following Creative Commons License CC-BY-ND 3.0]
Department of Defense
The U.S. has a growing corps of cyber-warriors and drone pilots who target human populations with bomb strapped drones. Now the Pentagon is commending their all-too-real virtual combat with a new medal.
Last month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta approved the military’s first new combat medal in nearly a century. The Distinguished Warfare Medal is bestowed to individuals in recognition of “extraordinary contributions” to combat operations conducted from afar.
In the military hierarchy of honor, the new ‘lethal gamer’ medal is the eighth highest award behind the Medal of Honor.
Some are calling it the “Chair-borne Medal,” “the Nintendo Medal,” “the Purple Buttocks,” and the “Distant Warfare Medal,” demeaning the computer-based iWarriors because they are not exposed to imminent mortal danger like traditional combat soldiers. A growing alliance of veterans groups and politicians are lobbying the Pentagon and President Obama to downgrade the award, which is ahead of the Bronze Star and Purple Heart in terms of distinction.
Regardless of the kerfuffle over the proper accolades for the military’s deadly computer nerd-core, little argument has been put forward questioning the ethics of bestowing an honorary trinket on a group of techno-assassins that spy on and bomb suspected terrorists, American citizens, wedding parties and children from the comfort of a computer screen.
Read more on techno-monstrosities in McSpadden’s “The Early History of the Robot Wars” Part 1 and Part 2
By now, all you current and former subscribers to the EF! Journal should have seen our 2013 Winter update letter in the mail. For those who have sent back donations, we offer our full gratitude for your commitment to sustaining the media of the eco-resistance.
For those still sitting on the letters twiddling your thumbs, we ask that if you can afford a donation of any amount, please get them in the mail to us soon, before they are totally buried under the mounds of junk mail from whack NGOs with their glossy polar bear pictures who are trying to capitalize off your christmas gift money…
And for those who didn’t see it in the mail, you can subscribe to the Journal right here and now, so you’ll never miss another riveting letter from us again. In the meantime, the text from the letter is below. Also, you can print out the whole thing to make copies and give ‘em to all your friends by clicking on the image to the right.
Yule Season’s Greetings To All You Eco-Defenders
And Earth First! Journal Supporters
It’s been a long, hard year here at the Earth First! Journal office. Despite financial pressures in conjunction with lots of court dates, once again, we have persisted.
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Dec. 24 (UPI) — The western portion of Antarctica is warming twice as fast as previously thought and triple the world’s average temperature rise, U.S. scientists say.
The temperature in the center of western Antarctica, about 700 miles from the South Pole, has risen 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit since 1958, making that area one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth, the researchers wrote in the journal Nature Geoscience.
A 2009 measurement considered authoritative had indicated that part of the continent, which resembles a giant peninsula stretching roughly from the South Pole toward the southern tip of South America, had warmed just 2.2 degrees since 1957. Continue reading
Considered by many to have an intelligence that rivals humankind’s and otherworldly transformative evolution powers, the cuttlefish is among creatures slated for death in a sudden mass extinction of the worlds’ oceans.
Teetering on the dire precipice between existence and annihilation, time is running out for the Royal Bengal tiger, the Great White shark, and Victorian koalas.
There are reports that species in Brazil’s coastal rainforest are disappearing faster than scientists can keep track of them. This is owed in part to the ripple effect of extinction, creatures toppling off the planet in a chain reaction.
But perhaps the most brutal and rapid decline is coming for the world’s oceans, with scientists predicting a cataclysmic period of mass extinction currently upon us, the ramifications for which will in turn be our own demise. From 1900-2010, freshwater fish species in North America went extinct at a rate 877 times faster than the rate found in the fossil record, while estimates indicate the rate may double between now and 2050.
Plastic, clothing fibers and CO2 are not the only things ending up the sea. So is caffeine.
Scientists at Portland State University and Washington State University, Vancouver, found caffeine concentrations off the coast of Oregon. To their surprise, the substance was not always concentrated around population centers or pollution sources. In fact, they found coffee contamination in wilder areas, likely because wastewater-treatment plants have to adhere to higher standards than septic systems. They also discovered that caffeine levels spiked after storm-caused sewer overflows.
Since the Pacific Northwest has no sources of naturally occurring caffeine, its presence in coastal waters shows that waste from human sources is leaching into the sea. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), one of the project’s funders, said in a news release: “The presence of caffeine in ocean water may also signal additional pollution such as pesticides and pharmaceuticals.”
by Steve Connor cross posted from the Independent
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
“Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,” Dr Semiletov said. “I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them.”
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.
Dr Semiletov’s team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.
In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the “fountains” or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.
“In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed,” Dr Semiletov said. “We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal.”
Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
Scientists and environmental groups warned that urgent action was still needed to rescue the world from climate change, despite the deal sealed on Sunday morning in Durban after two weeks of talks.
Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said: “This empty shell of a plan leaves the planet hurtling towards catastrophic climate change. If Durban is to be a historic stepping stone towards success the world must urgently agree ambitious targets to slash emissions.” Although governments managed to find a last-minute deal that should lead to the first legally binding global agreement on climate change covering developed and developing countries, they did not discuss whether their pledges to cut emissions would prevent dangerous levels of global warming.
Under the Durban agreement, governments will now spend four years negotiating how far and how fast each country should cut carbon emissions.
Atkins said the science was clear – the current emissions targets set by developed and developing countries were inadequate, and if they were not strengthened, the poorest would be hurt most. “Millions of the poorest people around the globe are already facing the impacts of climate change – countries like the US who have done most to create this crisis must now take the lead in tackling it,” he said.
Other environmental groups and scientists agreed.
“What is positive in Durban is that governments have reopened the door to a legally binding global agreement involving the world’s major emitters, a door which many thought had been shut at the Copenhagen conference in 2009,” said Bill Hare, director at Climate Action Tracker.
“What remains to be done is to take more ambitious actions to reduce emissions, and until this is done we are still headed to over 3C warming. There are still no new pledges on the table and the process agreed in Durban towards raising the ambition and increasing emission reductions is uncertain in its outcome.”
Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics said the current pledges from countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions were not enough to hold global temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which scientists say climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.
He said that, according to the United Nations environment programme, countries’ current emissions pledges would collectively mean that global annual emissions of greenhouse gases would be about 50bn tonnes in 2020, similar to the total in 2011.
But to have a 50-50 chance of avoiding global warming over 2C, scientists estimate that global annual emissions would need to fall to about 44bn tonnes in 2020, to less than 35bn tonnes in 2030 and less than 20bn tonnes in 2050.
Ward said: “[That means the current] pledges for emissions reductions are not consistent with the two degrees target, although they would, if delivered, move us halfway between ‘business as usual’ and the path on which we would need to be in 2020.”
Several participants in the talks said current pledges had been covered at last year’s conference in Cancún where countries confirmed their emissions targets. Instead, this year was about diplomacy: chiefly, the issue of whether countries should be bound to cut emissions through an international treaty, or should make voluntary pledges. The question has dogged the talks for over a decade.
At the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, nations failed to write a treaty though they did sign up to a lesser form of agreement, in which the world’s biggest emitters – developed and developing – set out targets to curb their carbon by 2020.
However, the targets that have been set will be subject to review from 2013-15 to decide whether they should be toughened, especially in the light of a scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due out in 2014. The climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, said: “The direction of travel is clear – the targets can only be strengthened. The scientific evidence is growing clearer.”
For some, including the US and China, this “pledge and review” process of voluntary pledges offers an adequate way of ensuring carbon is reduced globally. But for others, including the EU and many developing countries, it is inferior to a legally binding international treaty, because the voluntary process is too prone to politicians reneging on their commitments.
Brazil’s chief negotiator, ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, said: “This is a landmark achievement that creates real possibilities for scaling up the fight against climate change. It’s an excellent text that clearly sets points of action, points of commitment, and timetables, and it is legally-binding, so it is extremely effective, potentially, for responding to the need of climate change. We got what we came to Durban to get.”
In return for the Durban agreement, the EU conceded to developing country demands to continue the Kyoto protocol after its current emission-cutting targets expire next year.
The EU is the only major developed country bloc to agree to a continuation. Japan, Canada and Russia have all refused, and the US has never ratified the pact.
Reposted from Fiona Harvey and John Vidal Guardian UK
Click the image below to read the article.
If you like articles like this why not subscribe to the Earth First! Journal or Rolling Thunder.
EF! DAM
Ecodefense
