"Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others. . .they send forth a ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."Robert F. Kennedy
Using grade school physics of both Newtonian and Nuclear models, does anyone foresee counter currents of sufficient size to minimize/change direction of the huge 'Tsunami' roaring down on us, taking away not only our Freedom, but our Lives? Regardless if our salaries are dependant on us not knowing the inconvenient truths of reality (global warming, corporate rule, stagnant energy science) portrayed by the rare articles in the news media? I know only one - a free science, our window to Reality - that easily resolves the Foundational Problem of Quantum Physics and takes E=MC2 out of Kindergarten

Full Text Individual Post Reading

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Report Cites Major CIA Lapses Before 9/11

The trut and nothin but the trut in our search for weapons of mass donkeys, and clean, extremely cheap, unlimited new energy systems missing since the late 1940's - wonder if that has anything to do with the Trouble With Physics and the threats twenty first century civilization faces from lack and limitation fostering Resource Wars with obscenely profitable dinosaur energy systems causing global warming


Report Cites Major CIA Lapses Before 9/11

Insert: beautiful, beautiful words "Systematic Breakdown" - imagine a tsunami approaching a seashore village, and 50-60 people knew about it, but through systematic breakdown, failed to get the warning across and all died.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21, 2007
(CBS/AP) The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al Qaeda and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to Sept. 11, the agency's own watchdog concluded in a bruising report released Tuesday. Completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now, the 19-page executive summary finds extensive fault with the actions of senior CIA leaders and others beneath them. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA inspector general found. "They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated. Nearly three years before 9/11, then-CIA Director George Tenet signed a directive declaring "we are at war" with Osama Bin Laden and directed that "no resources or people (be) spared," reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. But the inspector general found "no…strategic plan was ever created" and no extra money or people were added to operations against Bin Laden. Yet the review team led by Inspector General John Helgerson found neither a "single point of failure nor a silver bullet" that would have stopped the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. In a statement, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the decision to release the report was not his choice or preference, but that he was making the report available as required by Congress in a law President George W. Bush signed earlier this month. "I thought the release of this report would distract officers serving their country on the front lines of a global conflict," Hayden said. "It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed." The report does cover terrain heavily examined by a congressional inquiry and the Sept. 11 Commission. However, the CIA watchdog's report goes further than previous reviews to examine the personal failings of individuals within the agency who led the pre-Sept. 11 efforts against al Qaeda. Helgerson's team found that no CIA employees violated the law or were part of any misconduct. The report recommends Tenet and other senior officers face possible disciplinary action, adds Martin, but a statement by the current CIA director says that's not going to happen. In October 2005, then-CIA Director Porter Goss also rejected the recommendation. He said he had spoken personally with the current employees named in the report, and he trusted their abilities and dedication. "The report unveiled no mysteries," Goss said. Hayden stuck by Goss's decision. Providing a glimpse of a series of shortfalls laid out in the longer, still-classified report, the executive summary says:
· U.S. spy agencies, which were overseen by Tenet, lacked a comprehensive strategic plan to counter Osama bin Laden prior to Sept. 11. The inspector general concluded that Tenet "by virtue of his position, bears ultimate responsibility for the fact that no such strategic plan was ever created."
· The CIA's analysis of al Qaeda before Sept. 2001 was lacking. No comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden was written after 1993, and no comprehensive report laying out the threats of 2001 was assembled. "A number of important issues were covered insufficiently or not at all," the report found.
· The CIA and the National Security Agency tussled over their responsibilities in dealing with al Qaeda well into 2001. Only Tenet's personal involvement could have led to a timely resolution, the report concluded.
· The CIA station charged with monitoring bin Laden, code-named Alec Station, was overworked, lacked operational experience, expertise and training. The report recommended forming accountability boards for the CIA Counterterror Center chiefs from 1998 to 2001, including Black.
· Although 50 to 60 people read at least one CIA cable about two of the hijackers, the information was not shared with the proper offices and agencies. "That so many individuals failed to act in this case reflects a systemic breakdown.... Basically, there was no coherent, functioning watch-listing program," the report said. The report again called for further review of Black and his predecessor. While blame is heaped on Tenet and his deputies, the report also says that Tenet was forcefully engaged in counterterrorism efforts and personally sounded the alarm before Congress, the military and policymakers. In a now well-known 1998 memo, he declared, "We are at war." The trouble, the report said, was follow-up. In a statement, Tenet said the inspector general is "flat wrong" about the lack of plan. "There was in fact a robust plan, marked by extraordinary effort and dedication to fighting terrorism, dating back to long before 9/11," he said. "Without such an effort, we would not have been able to give the president a plan on Sept. 15, 2001, that led to the routing of the Taliban, chasing al Qaeda from its Afghan sanctuary and combating terrorists across 92 countries."

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Red Star Rising: Russian Military Rebuilds

Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies. As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity
Red Star Rising: Russian Military Rebuilds
MOSCOW, Aug. 19, 2007
NYT (Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Fred Weir.
After a newly self-confident, oil-rich Russia teamed up with China in joint military exercises Friday, it is moving to reclaim the former Soviet Union's status as a global military power. A seven-year, $200-billion rearmament plan signed by President Vladimir Putin earlier this year will purchase new generations of missiles, planes, and perhaps aircraft carriers to rebuild Russia's arsenal. Already, the new military posture is on display: This summer, Russian bombers have extended their patrol ranges far into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, forcing U.S. and NATO interceptors to scramble for the first time since the cold war's end. "Diplomacy between Russia and the West is increasingly being overshadowed by military gestures," says Sergei Strokan, a foreign-policy expert with the independent daily Kommersant. "It's clear that the Kremlin is listening more and more to the generals and giving them more of what they want." Economic Bloc Ups Military Teamwork On Friday, Mr. Putin joined leaders of China and other members of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Russia's Chelyabinsk region to view the final stage of the group's most ambitious joint military maneuvers yet, including 6,500 troops and over 100 aircraft. Also on hand were scheduled to be leaders of SCO observer states and prospective members, among them India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia. At an SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan Thursday, Putin stressed that while Russia is not seeking to build a Cold War-style "military bloc," he does see the SCO expanding from its original purpose as an economic association to take on a greater military role. "Year by year, the SCO is becoming a more substantial factor in ensuring security in the region," he said. "Russia, like other SCO states, favors strengthening the multipolar international system providing equal security and development potential for all countries. Any attempts to solve global and regional problems unilaterally have no future," he added. The SCO, founded in 2001, is often referred to as a "club of dictators" due to less-than-democratic ex-Soviet members such as Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. The group has been holding joint war games since 2005, when it also demanded that the U.S. vacate military bases it had acquired after 9/11 in former Soviet Central Asia, whose oil and gas reserves are garnering increased attention from the West. "The SCO clearly wants the U.S. to leave Central Asia; that's a basic political demand," says Ivan Safranchuk, Moscow director of the independent World Security Institute. "That's one reason why the SCO is holding military exercises, to demonstrate its capability to take responsibility for stability in Central Asia after the U.S. leaves." New Naval Base, Long-Range Missiles Moscow's growing military footprint – and the apprehensions of others about it – is evident in a spate of recent news events:
· Last week the ex-Soviet republic of Georgia accused Russian warplanes of invading its airspace and firing a missile (which failed to explode) at a radio station. Russian officials denied the allegation and suggested that Georgian leaders fabricated the incident. Tensions have been high between Russia and Georgia over Moscow's support for two breakaway Georgian regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which are protected by Russian "peacekeeping" troops.
· Russian naval chief Admiral Vladimir Masorin announced this month that Russia may reclaim a naval base at Tartus, in Syria, from which Soviet warships used to keep tabs on U.S. ships. "The Mediterranean is an important theater of operations for the Russian Black Sea Fleet," he said. "We must restore a permanent presence of the Russian Navy in this region."
· In July, amid worsening relations between Russia and Britain over the still-unsolved poisoning death of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, two Russian Tu-95 bombers flew deep into NATO territory for the first time since the Cold War's end and, according to Britain's defense ministry, briefly entered British airspace before being escorted away by British fighter planes.
· Last week, in another post-Soviet first, Russian bombers "revived the tradition of our long-range aviation to fly far into the ocean, to meet U.S. aircraft carriers and greet U.S. pilots visually," ending up near the American Pacific base of Guam, Russian Air Force Maj. Gen. Pavel Androsov told Russian media. He added that the pilots on both sides "exchanged grins."
· Russia has recently conducted tests of new land- and sea-based intercontinental missiles, which are expected to soon replace the country's aging Soviet-era nuclear deterrent. As a partial response to U.S. missile defense plans, Russia will develop a missile defense "project that will include not only air defense systems but also anti-ballistic missile and space defense systems" to protect Moscow and other Russian centers, Russian Air Force chief Col. Gen. Alexandr Zelin told Russian media last week.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Russia, China Hold Joint War Games


Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies. As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity



Russia, China Hold Joint War Games
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:57 a.m. ET
CHEBARKUL TESTING RANGE, Russia (AP) -- Fighter jets streaked through the air as Russian and Chinese forces held their first joint maneuvers on Russian land Friday in a demonstration of their growing military ties and a shared desire to counter U.S. global clout.
The war games in the southern Ural Mountains involved some 6,000 troops from Russia and China along with a handful of soldiers from four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations that are part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional group dominated by Moscow and Beijing.
The drills coincided with a massive Russian air force exercise in which dozens of Russian strategic bombers ranged far over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and other leaders of the SCO nations attended the exercise, which followed their summit Thursday in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.
The summit concluded with a communique that sounded like a thinly veiled warning to the United States to stay away from the strategically placed, resource-rich region.
''Stability and security in Central Asia are best ensured primarily through efforts taken by the nations of the region on the basis of the existing regional associations,'' the statement said.
Friday's military exercise involved dozens of aircraft and hundreds of armored vehicles which countered a mock attack by terrorists and insurgents striving to take control of energy resources.
The United States, Russia and China are locked in an increasingly tense rivalry for control over Central Asia's vast hydrocarbon riches. Washington supports plans for pipelines that would carry the region's oil and gas to the West and bypass Russia, while Moscow has pushed strongly to control the export flows. China also has shown a growing appetite for energy to power its booming economy.
Ivan Safranchuk, an analyst at World Security Institute, said Friday's exercise underlined that ''the SCO wants to show that Central Asia is its exclusive sphere of responsibility.''
Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov denied media allegations that the military exercise was aimed against the United States. ''I don't see anything anti-American in the SCO exercise,'' he said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Relations between Russia and the United States have worsened steadily amid U.S. criticism of Russia's democracy, Moscow's strong objections to U.S. missile defense plans and differences over global crises.
In a parallel exercise Friday, dozens of Russian strategic bombers flew to the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans, air force spokesman Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky said. NATO jets were scrambled to accompany the Russian aircraft, he said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Soviet bombers routinely flew such missions to areas from which nuclear-tipped cruise missiles could be launched at the United States. The maneuvers stopped the post-Soviet economic meltdown, but booming oil prices have allowed Russia to increase its military budget.
The SCO was created 11 years ago to address religious extremism and border security issues in Central Asia. In recent years, with Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia signing on as observers, the group has increasingly grown into a bloc aimed at defying U.S. interests in the region.
In 2005, the SCO called for a timetable to be set for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from two member countries, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Uzbekistan evicted U.S. forces later that year, but Kyrgyzstan still has a U.S. base, which supports operations in nearby Afghanistan. Russia also maintains a military base in Kyrgyzstan.
Moscow and Beijing have developed what they call a ''strategic partnership'' since the Soviet collapse, cemented by their perceptions that the United States dominates global affairs.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose country has SCO observer status, attended the summit for the second consecutive year. Losyukov said the group has no immediate plans to accept full members.
On Thursday, Ahmadinejad criticized U.S. missile defense plans as a threat to the entire region. ''These intentions go beyond just one country. They are of concern for much of the continent, Asia and SCO members,'' he said.
Moscow objects vehemently to Washington's plans to deploy missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, saying the system would threaten Russia security. The United States says the missile defenses are necessary to avert the threat of possible missile attacks by Iran.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings

Oh, the profits are divinely obscene! What health care? Bridges falling down? Let's Limbo now, lower, lower life expectancy...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone .............
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings
US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings; Other Nations Improving Health Care, Nutrition
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
CBS The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.
"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore.
The shortest life expectancies were clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, as well as famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years, followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.
Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.
But "it's not as simple as saying we don't have national health insurance," said Sam Harper, an epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal. "It's not that easy."
Among the other factors:
Adults in the United States have one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nearly a third of U.S. adults 20 years and older are obese, while about two-thirds are overweight, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
"The U.S. has the resources that allow people to get fat and lazy," said Paul Terry, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta. "We have the luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle as opposed to having one imposed on us by hard times."
Racial disparities. Black Americans have an average life expectancy of 73.3 years, five years shorter than white Americans.
Black American males have a life expectancy of 69.8 years, slightly longer than the averages for Iran and Syria and slightly shorter than in Nicaragua and Morocco.
A relatively high percentage of babies born in the U.S. die before their first birthday, compared with other industrialized nations.
Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia.
"It really reflects the social conditions in which African American women grow up and have children," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health. "We haven't done anything to eliminate those disparities."
Another reason for the U.S. drop in the ranking is that the Census Bureau now tracks life expectancy for a lot more countries 222 in 2004 than it did in the 1980s. However, that does not explain why so many countries entered the rankings with longer life expectancies than the United States.
Murray, from the University of Washington, said improved access to health insurance could increase life expectancy. But, he predicted, the U.S. won't move up in the world rankings as long as the health care debate is limited to insurance.
Policymakers also should focus on ways to reduce cancer, heart disease and lung disease, said Murray. He advocates stepped-up efforts to reduce tobacco use, control blood pressure, reduce cholesterol and regulate blood sugar.
"Even if we focused only on those four things, we would go along way toward improving health care in the United States," Murray said. "The starting point is the recognition that the U.S. does not have the best health care system. There are still an awful lot of people who think it does."
On The Net:
Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/
National Center for Health Statistics: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lifexpec.htm

Thursday, August 9, 2007

China Weighs Economic "Nuclear Option"

Time will tell the Gifts we bring to ourselves and our children in the next few years - the major forces at play accelerating and foretelling our destination are in the headlines - science suppression causing the Trouble With Physics and creating the stagnant energy science is an extremely unwise and lethal choice as it also deprives us of the evolutionary wisdom and understanding that accompanies new energy revelations - all requirements for survival Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy
China Weighs Economic "Nuclear Option"
BEIJING, Aug. 9, 2007
(CBS) CBS News' Barry Petersen filed this story from China for CBSNews.com.
Talking about currency rates is a lot like being forced by Mom to eat your vegetables: you know it's good for you, but you hate it. So, apologies for offering a big course of Brussels sprouts here, but it is information worth knowing. The Chinese are holding and investing something like $1.3 trillion they made from selling goods to America. Now, some Chinese officials have floated the idea that these U.S. dollars could be used against the United States. Here is how the London Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported the story: "Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning — for the first time — that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the U.S. Congress. "Described as China's 'nuclear option' in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the U.S. currency is already breaking down through historic support levels." The words that hit were "NUCLEAR OPTION". Rarely do you find that in a story on currency. Here is the problem: The United States maxed-out its credit cards long ago, and it needs to borrow and borrow both to raise still more money, and to pay interest on that ever-growing debt. The Chinese, with all those dollars, are willing to lend by buying U.S. Treasury bonds. That keeps interest rates down and that gives Americans extra bucks to buy… more goods from China. This is now a part of the presidential campaign. Here's what Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) said at this week's AFL-CIO debate in Chicago about our debts to China: "This administration, in order to fund a war that shouldn't be being fought and tax cuts that weren't needed for the wealthy — we're now in debt almost a trillion dollars — a trillion dollars to China. We better end that war, cut those taxes, reduce the deficit and make sure that they no longer own the mortgage on our home." His comment drew this response from leading Democratic candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton: "I want to say amen to Joe Biden, because he's 100 percent right." The reality is that China is probably going to slow down its investment in U.S. bonds anyway. This is not so much because they don't like us, as it is because they are becoming savvy about where and how to spend their huge nest egg. Low-interest U.S. bonds? According to an article in USA Today, some Chinese bankers say it would be better to start buying into businesses (U.S., European. Asian), where you get a better return and have long-term growth. Think the Japanese in the 1980s buying U.S. skyscrapers (Rockefeller Center) and golf courses (Pebble Beach). Back to the nuclear option — oddly enough, many voices in the U.S., especially in the U.S. Senate, are pressing China to re-value its currency up against the dollar, making Chinese goods more expensive and U.S. good cheaper for the Chinese to buy. The Chinese are resisting. Their cheap currency helps them sell their goods. And that is where the nuclear (currency) option comes in… the U.S. is being warned to stop meddling in China's internal affairs. But let us, for a moment, allow those Senators their due. Let us say that China revalues its currency. Then the Chinese could — if they wanted — buy U.S. goods by spending a lot less of their money, called the yuan. American proponents of this think it would level the trade playing field and spark an economic revival for U.S. companies. Alas, and alack. Back to those vegetables, because it probably won't happen that way. Arthur Kroeber, a managing director of the Dragonomics research firm in Hong Kong and Beijing, looked ahead to see what would likely happen if China's currency is revalued. His thoughts:
· China's exports will get more expensive so manufactures will just move to Vietnam or other places with cheap labor. Net result — it won't bring back those lost U.S. manufacturing jobs.
· If China retaliates by no longer buying low-interest U.S. bonds, the U.S. still needs the money. That means raising interest rates to attract other investors and that means higher interest rates on American home mortgages, car loans, etc.
· Gas price go up, even further. With a more valuable yuan, the Chinese can buy gas for less, encouraging them to drive more, and spike world demand. Overall oil prices could climb ever higher. Sorry about making you eat all those spears of economic broccoli. But if we don't understand this, and are guided by politicians playing for sound bites, promising quick fixes, we could end up on a path that means we all share the pain... right in our pocketbook. And the Chinese would be laughing all the way to the bank. Their bank.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc.

A Sudden Storm Brings New York City to Its Knees


More trapped energy, more weather
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

August 9, 2007
A Sudden Storm Brings New York City to Its Knees
By JAMES BARRON
A brief but fierce storm drenched the New York region just before the morning rush yesterday, paralyzing the transit system, flooding major thoroughfares, cutting off electricity to thousands of homes and causing confusion that lingered through a humid, sweaty day.
The storm, which sent water gushing into subway tunnels and swirling over commuter railroad tracks, also unleashed a tornado that brushed Staten Island, then whipped southwestern Brooklyn with winds of up to 135 miles an hour.
That was perhaps the most ominous part of a deluge that left people wondering if they were waking up to a major catastrophe, with streets blocked by the twisted wreckage of cars with broken-out windows that had been battered by debris.
The deluge overwhelmed storm sewers, and one woman was killed after her car became stuck in a flooded underpass on Staten Island. The police said another car struck hers, starting a fire that burned her so badly that her body could not be immediately identified.
City officials said at least a half-dozen people elsewhere had been injured by the storm.
Commuter rail service was interrupted, and hundreds of airline flights were delayed. Stretches of heavily trafficked arteries like Queens Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue were under water.
But the biggest disruption struck the city’s subway system, where most lines were shut down during the morning rush when the water knocked out signals, stranding or delaying millions of riders. Though the Metropolitan Transportation Authority restored most of them during the day, a half-dozen were still out of commission during the evening rush hour and the agency said some problems could last into today.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to review how the transit system had failed after a sudden downpour for the third time in seven months. At a separate news briefing, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg referred to “chaos with the subway system,” but refrained from judging the agency’s performance.
“We are very much tied to mass transit, which is a system that is obviously vulnerable to natural events,” the mayor said. The authority has pumps to drain the tracks, he said, but with “very heavy rain, you can only design it to take away so much.”
For New Yorkers, whether they were tied to the subways or not, the rain served as a short and violent prelude to a day of frustration. It was a day of poor communication, of uncertainty about how to get to work and of anger at what 1.7 inches of rain — the amount that fell in Central Park in one hour, between 6 and 7 a.m. — could do to disrupt the city’s daily routines.
The day began with already-soggy commuters trudging to the subway, only to discover there was no subway. They trudged to bus stops and tried to crowd onto buses any way they could, through the front door or the back door. Some settled for the bus after that. Or the bus after that. Or the bus after that. As the day went on, crowds and unusually long lines persisted at some bus stops in Manhattan and Queens.
Some commuters described spats — not fistfights, really, but almost — as they tried to jam into already jammed buses or, on the few subway lines that were running, into sardine-density cars.
“I waited for five trains,” said Matthew A. Brown, an architect who usually catches the F train at the Fort Hamilton Parkway stop in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn. “You couldn’t get on. There were little tiffs, like, ‘Hey, buddy, there’s no room.’ I decided not to fight it.”
As the morning wore on, traffic on many Manhattan streets remained at rush-period density, as some frustrated commuters who could not use mass transit turned to the roads. At noon, one driver spent just under an hour going from 79th Street and Riverside Drive to Times Square.
In the anger of the moment — a moment that seemed to last all day for some — they remembered a line often attributed to the humorist Robert Benchley in a cable from Venice: “Streets filled with water — please advise.” But they also complained that there was no advice. More than three hours after the storm surged across the area, the clerks at the Northern Boulevard station in Woodside, Queens were standing on the street. They said they had no idea when service would resume.
At Pennsylvania Station, commuters said announcements were few and far between. A hand-lettered sign spelled out the extent of the disruptions: “No trains at this time: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, N, R, S, Q, W, V, F, L, J, 7 to Queens.”
Rick Gee of Farmingdale, N.Y., stared at the sign. His trip on the Long Island Rail Road had taken three hours — usually it takes one — and he still had to complete the last leg of his commute to his job as a porter at an apartment house at 56th Street and Lexington Avenue. And usually he can count on the subway.
“I guess I’ll walk,” he announced, sounding forlorn.
Other commuters seemed surprised at how much the storm seemed to have upset the daily rhythms and rituals. And recovering proved difficult. As late as 9:55 a.m., transit officials were warning that the subway system would not be back until noon at the earliest.
For much of the morning, New York City Transit’s press information office had only one employee on duty; the others were trying to get in.
Charles Seaton, a spokesman for the agency, said at 10:35 a.m. that he had just reached the office. His trip took three hours.
By 10 p.m. most service was restored, with one exception: the F train was suspended in Queens between the 71st Street-Continental Avenue station in Forest Hills and the end of the line, the 179th Street station in Jamaica. The prospect for service there this morning was unclear.
The Long Island Rail Road said it had canceled 15 trains for the evening rush. The L.I.R.R. said delays in the morning averaged 30 minutes on trains through Mineola because of flooding near the station. No Port Washington branch trains ran from 7 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. because water submerged the third rail in Bayside.
New Jersey Transit said most of its lines were delayed 15 to 20 minutes in the morning, but were back on schedule by midday.
Forecasters said the storm was unusual for the amount of rain that fell in just an hour, between 6 and 7 a.m. “This is something you don’t typically see,” said John Murray of the National Weather Service. The storm began a few hours earlier. In all, the National Weather Service recorded 2.8 inches in Central Park.
The totals at airports in the area were higher. Kennedy International Airport reported 3.47 inches. Newark Liberty Airport reported 3.12 inches, breaking a record of 1.32 inches that had stood since 1959. The storm also set a record at La Guardia Airport, with 2.54 inches, and at Long Island Islip MacArthur Airport, with 0.46 inches.
The storm was “definitely one of the stronger ones we’ve seen,” said John Christantello, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Upton, N.Y., on Long Island, because the conditions that make for powerful storms came together — a churning system of thunderstorms that rolled east from western Pennsylvania and upstate New York, and the sticky air that had hung over the New York area for the last few days.
Jeff Warner, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, said that when that kind of storm system collides with that kind of moist air, “the potential for rain really goes up.”
According to Consolidated Edison, the storm toppled electric lines in parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island. A Con Ed spokesman said that as many as 4,000 customers lost power.
Then there was the tornado. After sending meteorologists to look through debris for telltale signs of circular wind patterns, the National Weather Service concluded that that was what had hopscotched through Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, with winds of 111 to 135 miles an hour, after first touching down on Staten Island, where damage was largely limited to trees.
In the tornado’s wake, 20 buildings had to be evacuated, leaving 32 families without shelter, the city’s Buildings Department said. Another 50 buildings were damaged

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

U.N.: Record extreme weather in '07

More energy, more weather
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

U.N.: Record extreme weather in '07
Global land temperatures in January, April likely warmest on record
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 6:50 p.m. CT Aug 7, 2007

GENEVA - The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heat waves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said Tuesday.
The World Meteorological Organization said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at about 3 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average for those months.
There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heat waves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America this year, the WMO said.
“The start of the year 2007 was a very active period in terms of extreme weather events,” Omar Baddour of the agency’s World Climate Program told journalists in Geneva.
While most scientists believe extreme weather events will be more frequent as heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions cause global temperatures to rise, Baddour said it was impossible to say with certainty what the second half of 2007 will bring.
“It is very difficult to make projections for the rest of the year,” he said.
'More frequent' extremes predictedThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. umbrella group of hundreds of experts, has noted an increasing trend in extreme weather events over the past 50 years and said irregular patterns are likely to intensify.
"IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent," the WMO noted.
"When we observe such extremes in individual years, it means that this fits well with current knowledge from the IPCC report on global trends," Baddour said, adding that climate scientists had reached a consensus that this trend would likely continue.
"There is no other consensus model than this one," he said.
South Asia’s worst monsoon flooding in recent memory has affected 30 million people in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, destroying croplands, livestock and property and raising fears of a health crisis in the densely-populated region.
The region saw four monsoon depressions in June and July, double the normal amount, the WMO said.
Huge swell waves swamped some 68 islands in the Maldives in May, resulting in severe damage, and the Arabian Sea had its first documented cyclone in June, touching Oman and Iran.
Heavy rains also doused southern China in June, with nearly 14 million people affected by floods and landslides that killed 120 people, the WMO said.
Europe, Africa, South AmericaEngland and Wales this year had their wettest May-July since records began in 1766, resulting in extensive flooding and more than $6 billion in damage, as well as at least nine deaths. Germany swung from its driest April since countrywide observations started in 1901 to its wettest May on record.
Temperature records were broken in southeastern Europe in June and July, and in western and central Russia in May. In many European countries, January and April were the warmest ever recorded.
In Africa, Mozambique suffered its worst floods in six years in February, followed by a tropical cyclone the same month, and flooding of the Nile River in June caused damage in Sudan.
South Africa in June had its first significant snowfall since 1981.
In South America, Uruguay in May had its worst flooding since 1959.
Argentina and Chile saw unusually cold winter temperatures in July. In Argentina, the capital Buenos Aires saw snow in July for the first time since 1918.
The WMO and its 188 member states are working to set up an early warning system for extreme weather events. The agency is also seeking to improve monitoring of the impacts of climate change, particularly in poorer countries which are expected to bear the brunt of floods, droughts and storms.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20159606/

Airlines Sue FBI And CIA Over 9/11 Blame


What others are saying since 9-11
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

Airlines Sue FBI And CIA Over 9/11 Blame
NYT NEW YORK, Aug. 7, 2007
(AP) Airlines and aviation-related companies sued the CIA and the FBI on Tuesday to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. The two lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Manhattan sought court orders for depositions as the aviation entities build their defenses against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to Sept. 11, 2001. The aviation companies said the agencies in a series of boilerplate letters had refused to let them depose two secret agents, including the 2001 head of the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit, and six FBI agents with key information about al Qaeda and bin Laden. The airlines, airport authorities, security companies and an aircraft manufacturer said they were entitled to present evidence to show the terrorist attacks did not depend upon negligence by any aviation defendants and that there were other causes of the attacks. They said that the depositions were likely to result in evidence showing the terrorists were sophisticated, ideologically driven and well-financed and would have succeeded regardless of any action by the aviation entities. "The aviation parties are entitled to show that operations conducted by the federal intelligence agencies were the most effective way to uncover and stop the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and that the inability of the federal intelligence agencies to detect and stop the plot is a more causal circumstance of the terrorist attacks than any allegedly negligent conduct of the aviation parties," the FBI lawsuit said. In the CIA lawsuit, companies including American Airlines owner AMR Corp., United Airlines' UAL Corp., US Airways Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Continental Airlines Inc. and Boeing Co. asked to interview the deputy chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit in 2001 and an FBI agent assigned to the unit at that time. The names of both are secret. In the FBI lawsuit, the companies asked to interview five former and current FBI employees who had participated in investigations of al Qaeda and al Qaeda operatives before and after Sept. 11. Those individuals included Coleen M. Rowley, the former top FBI lawyer in its Minneapolis office, who sent a scathing letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in May 2002 complaining that a supervisor in Washington interfered with the Minnesota investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. The lawsuits also sought to speak to Harry Samit, an FBI agent in the Minneapolis office who was among those who arrested Moussaoui in August 2001. They said he had testified that he suggested to his superiors that the Federal Aviation Administration be notified that Moussaoui was involved in a plot to hijack a commercial airliner. The testimony was critical to their defense because both agencies play key roles in advising the FAA as to whether new security measures were needed to protect civil aviation against terrorists, the lawsuits said. The airline entities said they need the testimony to defend against accusations that they had primary responsibility to assess the threat posed by terrorists, that they should have detected terrorists' weapons, that they should have anticipated the attacks and that they should have identified and stopped the 19 terrorists who carried out the suicide hijackings. Requests to interview the agents were rejected as not sufficiently explained, burdensome or protected by investigative or attorney-client privilege, the lawsuits said. Government spokeswoman Yusill Scribner said she had no immediate comment on the lawsuits. FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the agency had not reviewed the lawsuit against it and would not comment on pending litigation. A victims' compensation fund established by Congress has paid $6 billion to 2,880 families of those who died in the attacks and more than $1 billion to 2,680 injured victims. But 41 cases filed on behalf of 42 victims remain pending in federal court in Manhattan because some victims decided to pursue the usual court route rather than accept payouts from the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001. The first trials to assess damages are scheduled to begin in September.

Monday, August 6, 2007

Stop exporting death

Opinion not good from world majority (population numbers)
Meanwhile, Priority ONE ..................
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

16:52, August 06, 2007 China News
Stop exporting death
The U.S. government's recent announcement of its providing a large batch of advanced weapons to Arabian allies and Israel has caused wide concern. What will be the impact of this U.S. act on the Middle East, a region already in disorder? For a long time, as many countries believe, Washington has been creating terror and split in this region so as to gain opportunities to sell weapons there, and the U.S. arms sale plan would intensify Middle East disturbance.In the world pattern of weaponry trade, the U.S. annual exports have been averaging 40 percent of world total since 1991. The sales stood between 10 to 13 billion U.S. dollars since 2001, and even hit a record of 15 billion dollars in 2006. The U.S. leads the world in sales of munitions as a whole, ground-to-air missiles and warships. As a matter of fact, on the proliferation of both conventional weapons and those of mass destruction including missiles as well as nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, the U.S. has always been the evil creator lurking behind.The U.S. means of armament promotion can also be lauded world top, which feature the "creation of need" where there is no need. Americans have continuously fanned up comparison among nations so each of them are eager to buy more advanced weapons than those the U.S. sold to its neighbors, so that one's own security is guaranteed. Such a vicious circle resulted in nations' dependence on U.S. arms, and consequently billions of dollars flew their way to the wallets of U.S. arms dealers each year.Asia has become in recently years the world largest arms import market, almost taking half of global imports from 2001 to 2004, and a large part of them were sold to the Middle East. The national defense expenditure of Middle East countries stood at 52 billion dollars in 2003, up 20 percent from 2002, and rose to 55 billion dollars in 2007, of which most were spent on arms purchase and the U.S. is the major supplier. However, the ample-equipped Middle East countries failed to enjoy the sense of security brought by new weapons, as the U.S. claimed, and people there still live in the shadow of war, with lives engulfed by flames every day. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, among every five ethnic conflicts ever happened worldwide four have related sides equipped with U.S. arms. The weapon export of the U.S., it seems, has brought more war and death rather than peace and security. Isn't it that the U.S. should reflect on itself earnestly?


By People's Daily Online

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Iraq's Power Grid Near Collapse

Spreading smart bomb liberation everywhere - that's 98% surf-like poverty freedumb with 2% golden greedy guts freedom ... as the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

Iraq's Power Grid Near Collapse
NYT BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 5, 2007
(AP) Iraq's power grid is on the brink of collapse because of insurgent sabotage, rising demand, fuel shortages and provinces that are unplugging local power stations from the national grid, officials said Saturday. Electricity Ministry spokesman Aziz al-Shimari said power generation nationally is only meeting half the demand, and there had been four nationwide blackouts over the past two days. The shortages across the country are the worst since the summer of 2003, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, he said. Power supplies in Baghdad have been sporadic all summer and now are down to just a few hours a day, if that. The water supply in the capital has also been severely curtailed by power blackouts and cuts that have affected pumping and filtration stations. Karbala province south of Baghdad has been without power for three days, causing water mains to go dry in the provincial capital, the Shiite holy city of Karbala. "We no longer need television documentaries about the Stone Age. We are actually living in it. We are in constant danger because of the filthy water and rotten food we are having," said Hazim Obeid, who sells clothing at a stall in the Karbala market. Electricity shortages are a perennial problem in Iraq, even though it sits atop one of the world's largest crude oil reserves. The national power grid became decrepit under Saddam Hussein because his regime was under U.N. sanctions after the Gulf War and had trouble buying spare parts or equipment to upgrade the system. The power problems are only adding to the misery of Iraqis, already suffering from the effects of more than four years of war and sectarian violence. Outages make life almost unbearable in the summer months, when average daily temperatures reach between 110 and 120 degrees. One of the biggest problems facing the national grid is the move by provinces to disconnect their power plants from the system, reducing the overall amount of electricity being generated for the entire country. Provinces say they have no choice because they are not getting as much electricity in return for what they produce, mainly because the capital requires so much power. "Many southern provinces such as Basra, Diwaniyah, Nassiriyah, Babil have disconnected their power plants from the national grid. Northern provinces, including Kurdistan, are doing the same," al-Shimari said. "We have absolutely no control over some areas in the south," he added. "The national grid will collapse if the provinces do not abide by rules regarding their share of electricity. Everybody will lose and there will be no electricity winner," al-Shimari said. He complained that the central government was unable to do anything about provincial power stations pulling out of the national system, or the fact some provinces were failing to take themselves off the supply grid once they had consumed their daily ration of electricity. Najaf provincial spokesman Ahmed Deibel confirmed to The Associated Press Sunday that the gas turbine generator there had been removed from the national grid. He said the plant produced 50 megawatts while the province needed at least 200 megawatts. "What we produce is not enough even for us. We disconnected it from the national grid three days ago because the people in Baghdad were getting too much, leaving little electricity for Najaf," he said. Compounding the problem, al-Shimari said there are 17 high-tension lines running into Baghdad but only two were operational. The rest had been sabotaged. "What makes Baghdad the worst place in the country is that most of the lines leading into the capital have been destroyed. That is compounded by the fact that Baghdad has limited generating capacity," al-Shimari said. "When we fix a line, the insurgents attack it the next day," he added. Fuel shortages are also a major problem. In Karbala, provincial spokesman Ghalib al-Daami said a 50-megawatt power station had been shut down because of a lack of fuel, causing the entire province to be without water and electricity for the past three days. He said sewage was seeping above ground in nearly half the provincial capital because pump trucks used to clean septic tanks have been unable to operate due to gasoline shortages. The sewage was causing a health threat to citizens and contaminating crops in the region. Many people who normally would rely on small home generators for electricity can't afford to buy fuel. Gasoline prices have shot up to nearly $5 a gallon, Karbala residents say, a price that puts the fuel out of range for all but the wealthy. "We wait for the sunset to enjoy some coolness," said Qassim Hussein, a 31-year-old day laborer in Karbala. "The people are fed-up. There is no water, no electricity, there is nothing, but death. I've even had more trouble with my wife these last three days. Everybody is on edge." Iraq has the world's third-largest proven oil reserves, behind Saudi Arabia and Iran. But oil production has been hampered by insurgent and saboteur attacks, ranging from bombing pipelines to siphoning off oil. The attacks have cost the country billions of dollars since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Dilapidated infrastructure has also hindered refining, forcing Iraq to import large amounts of kerosene and other oil products. In other developments:
· The U.S. military announced the death of a Marine during combat Thursday in Iraq's western Anbar province. The U.S. military also issued a statement saying its forces killed four suspects and captured 33 others Saturday in raids in northern Iraq and along the Tigris River Valley.
· Mortar shells rained down on Mashtal, is a Shiite-dominated residential neighborhood in southeast Baghdad early Sunday, killing 13 civilians and wounding 14, police said. Police said two of the mortar shells landed near a gas station where people were lining up for fuel at the start of the work week. Many of the victims were burned by fuel that burst into flames from the attack, the officer said.
· In northern Iraq, a prison riot was brought under control two days after it broke out when Iraqi guards prepared to move inmates into an isolation unit and U.S. soldiers surrounded the facility. The riot at Badoosh prison outside Mosul, about 220 miles northwest of Baghdad, involved nearly 65 inmates. Iraqi guards killed one inmate who was trying to escape from the prison yard and wounded two others inside the prison, the U.S. military said in a statement. The U.S. military said American troops did not fire any rounds during the disturbance and no U.S. or Iraqi troops were wounded.

Saturday, August 4, 2007

Iraq's Water Woes

Spreading smart bomb liberation everywhere - that's 98% surf-like poverty freedumb with 2% golden greedy guts freedom ... as the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

Iraq's Water Woes
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 3, 2007
(CBS) It's illegal, to say nothing of unhealthy — but for tens of thousands of Iraqis displaced by sectarian violence, tapping into a main line is the only access to water of any kind. According to U.N. figures, barely one in three Iraqis have access to clean drinking water. Waterborne diseases like diarrhea — the most prolific killer of children under 5 — are on the increase. In some areas, it's up as much as 70 percent over last year. Providing essential services is a cornerstone of American military counter-insurgency strategy. The U.S. has spent $1.5 billion dollars on water projects since the invasion four years ago. Another half a billion has been budgeted for this year and it all adds up to the proverbial "drop in a bucket."

It took U.S. and Iraqi engineers 10 months to refurbish one pumping station to provide 10,000 people with clean water. Security permitting, the officer in charge aims to increase that by a factor of five. "Once we reach that goal, we will be able to supply water for approximately 20 percent of the local area full time,” says Cmdr. Steve Frost, of the U.S. Navy Seabees. For the other 80 percent who often have to walk miles to bring home a bucket of water, that means more than most people can imagine. "We had one Iraqi lady who came up to us, gave us a hug and shook our hands and said ‘Thank you’ because it was the first time they've ever had potable water running in their house,” Frost said. The problem is so dire that after a three-year break, the U.N. has resumed trucking water to cut-off areas. It’s a costly and dangerous way to fill cooking pots and give a few kids a welcome shower. Locally made ice is the only way many families have to cool food. The plants claim they use clean water. But at one plant, before it becomes ice, the water provides a cold shower for the men who run it. After that, well, it becomes whatever is needed to beat the 110 degree Fahrenheit heat in a place where clean water is as much a dream as peace.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc.

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine

No Lies in Freedumb land and that is the "trut''
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine
By Sharon Begley
MSN - Newsweek
Aug. 13, 2007 issue - Sen. Barbara Boxer had been chair of the Senate's Environment Committee for less than a month when the verdict landed last February. "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal," concluded a report by 600 scientists from governments, academia, green groups and businesses in 40 countries. Worse, there was now at least a 90 percent likelihood that the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels is causing longer droughts, more flood-causing downpours and worse heat waves, way up from earlier studies. Those who doubt the reality of human-caused climate change have spent decades disputing that. But Boxer figured that with "the overwhelming science out there, the deniers' days were numbered." As she left a meeting with the head of the international climate panel, however, a staffer had some news for her. A conservative think tank long funded by ExxonMobil, she told Boxer, had offered scientists $10,000 to write articles undercutting the new report and the computer-based climate models it is based on. "I realized," says Boxer, "there was a movement behind this that just wasn't giving up."
If you think those who have long challenged the mainstream scientific findings about global warming recognize that the game is over, think again. Yes, 19 million people watched the "Live Earth" concerts last month, titans of corporate America are calling for laws mandating greenhouse cuts, "green" magazines fill newsstands, and the film based on Al Gore's best-selling book, "An Inconvenient Truth," won an Oscar. But outside Hollywood, Manhattan and other habitats of the chattering classes, the denial machine is running at full throttle—and continuing to shape both government policy and public opinion.
Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress."
Just last year, polls found that 64 percent of Americans thought there was "a lot" of scientific disagreement on climate change; only one third thought planetary warming was "mainly caused by things people do." In contrast, majorities in Europe and Japan recognize a broad consensus among climate experts that greenhouse gases—mostly from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas to power the world's economies—are altering climate. A new NEWSWEEK Poll finds that the influence of the denial machine remains strong. Although the figure is less than in earlier polls, 39 percent of those asked say there is "a lot of disagreement among climate scientists" on the basic question of whether the planet is warming; 42 percent say there is a lot of disagreement that human activities are a major cause of global warming. Only 46 percent say the greenhouse effect is being felt today.
As a result of the undermining of the science, all the recent talk about addressing climate change has produced little in the way of actual action. Yes, last September Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a landmark law committing California to reduce statewide emissions of carbon dioxide to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent more by 2050. And this year both Minnesota and New Jersey passed laws requiring their states to reduce greenhouse emissions 80 percent below recent levels by 2050. In January, nine leading corporations—including Alcoa, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, Du Pont and General Electric—called on Congress to "enact strong national legislation" to reduce greenhouse gases. But although at least eight bills to require reductions in greenhouse gases have been introduced in Congress, their fate is decidedly murky. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives decided last week not even to bring to a vote a requirement that automakers improve vehicle mileage, an obvious step toward reducing greenhouse emissions. Nor has there been much public pressure to do so. Instead, every time the scientific case got stronger, "the American public yawned and bought bigger cars," Rep. Rush Holt, a New Jersey congressman and physicist, recently wrote in the journal Science; politicians "shrugged, said there is too much doubt among scientists, and did nothing."
It was 98 degrees in Washington on Thursday, June 23, 1988, and climate change was bursting into public consciousness. The Amazon was burning, wildfires raged in the United States, crops in the Midwest were scorched and it was shaping up to be the hottest year on record worldwide. A Senate committee, including Gore, had invited NASA climatologist James Hansen to testify about the greenhouse effect, and the members were not above a little stagecraft. The night before, staffers had opened windows in the hearing room. When Hansen began his testimony, the air conditioning was struggling, and sweat dotted his brow. It was the perfect image for the revelation to come. He was 99 percent sure, Hansen told the panel, that "the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now."
The reaction from industries most responsible for greenhouse emissions was immediate. "As soon as the scientific community began to come together on the science of climate change, the pushback began," says historian Naomi Oreskes of the University of California, San Diego. Individual companies and industry associations—representing petroleum, steel, autos and utilities, for instance—formed lobbying groups with names like the Global Climate Coalition and the Information Council on the Environment. ICE's game plan called for enlisting greenhouse doubters to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact," and to sow doubt about climate research just as cigarette makers had about smoking research. ICE ads asked, "If the earth is getting warmer, why is Minneapolis [or Kentucky, or some other site] getting colder?" This sounded what would become a recurring theme for naysayers: that global temperature data are flat-out wrong. For one thing, they argued, the data reflect urbanization (many temperature stations are in or near cities), not true global warming.
Shaping public opinion was only one goal of the industry groups, for soon after Hansen's sweat-drenched testimony they faced a more tangible threat: international proposals to address global warming. The United Nations had scheduled an "Earth Summit" for 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, and climate change was high on an agenda that included saving endangered species and rain forests. ICE and the Global Climate Coalition lobbied hard against a global treaty to curb greenhouse gases, and were joined by a central cog in the denial machine: the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank. Barely two months before Rio, it released a study concluding that models of the greenhouse effect had "substantially exaggerated its importance." The small amount of global warming that might be occurring, it argued, actually reflected a simple fact: the Sun is putting out more energy. The idea of a "variable Sun" has remained a constant in the naysayers' arsenal to this day, even though the tiny increase in solar output over recent decades falls far short of explaining the extent or details of the observed warming.
In what would become a key tactic of the denial machine—think tanks linking up with like-minded, contrarian researchers—the report was endorsed in a letter to President George H.W. Bush by MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen. Lindzen, whose parents had fled Hitler's Germany, is described by old friends as the kind of man who, if you're in the minority, opts to be with you. "I thought it was important to make it clear that the science was at an early and primitive stage and that there was little basis for consensus and much reason for skepticism," he told Scientific American magazine. "I did feel a moral obligation."
Bush was torn. The head of his Environmental Protection Agency, William Reilly, supported binding cuts in greenhouse emissions. Political advisers insisted on nothing more than voluntary cuts. Bush's chief of staff, John Sununu, had a Ph.D. in engineering from MIT and "knew computers," recalls Reilly. Sununu frequently logged on to a computer model of climate, Reilly says, and "vigorously critiqued" its assumptions and projections.
Sununu's side won. The Rio treaty called for countries to voluntarily stabilize their greenhouse emissions by returning them to 1990 levels by 2000. (As it turned out, U.S. emissions in 2000 were 14 percent higher than in 1990.) Avoiding mandatory cuts was a huge victory for industry. But Rio was also a setback for climate contrarians, says UCSD's Oreskes: "It was one thing when Al Gore said there's global warming, but quite another when George Bush signed a convention saying so." And the doubters faced a newly powerful nemesis. Just months after he signed the Rio pact, Bush lost to Bill Clinton—whose vice president, Gore, had made climate change his signature issue.
Groups that opposed greenhouse curbs ramped up. They "settled on the 'science isn't there' argument because they didn't believe they'd be able to convince the public to do nothing if climate change were real," says David Goldston, who served as Republican chief of staff for the House of Representatives science committee until 2006. Industry found a friend in Patrick Michaels, a climatologist at the University of Virginia who keeps a small farm where he raises prize-winning pumpkins and whose favorite weather, he once told a reporter, is "anything severe." Michaels had written several popular articles on climate change, including an op-ed in The Washington Post in 1989 warning of "apocalyptic environmentalism," which he called "the most popular new religion to come along since Marxism." The coal industry's Western Fuels Association paid Michaels to produce a newsletter called World Climate Report, which has regularly trashed mainstream climate science. (At a 1995 hearing in Minnesota on coal-fired power plants, Michaels admitted that he received more than $165,000 from industry; he now declines to comment on his industry funding, asking, "What is this, a hatchet job?")
The road from Rio led to an international meeting in Kyoto, Japan, where more than 100 nations would negotiate a treaty on making Rio's voluntary—and largely ignored—greenhouse curbs mandatory. The coal and oil industries, worried that Kyoto could lead to binding greenhouse cuts that would imperil their profits, ramped up their message that there was too much scientific uncertainty to justify any such cuts. There was just one little problem. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC—the international body that periodically assesses climate research—had just issued its second report, and the conclusion of its 2,500 scientists looked devastating for greenhouse doubters. Although both natural swings and changes in the Sun's output might be contributing to climate change, it concluded, "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on climate."
Faced with this emerging consensus, the denial machine hardly blinked. There is too much "scientific uncertainty" to justify curbs on greenhouse emissions, William O'Keefe, then a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute and leader of the Global Climate Coalition, suggested in 1996. Virginia's Michaels echoed that idea in a 1997 op-ed in The Washington Post, describing "a growing contingent of scientists who are increasingly unhappy with the glib forecasts of gloom and doom." To reinforce the appearance of uncertainty and disagreement, the denial machine churned out white papers and "studies" (not empirical research, but critiques of others' work). The Marshall Institute, for instance, issued reports by a Harvard University astrophysicist it supported pointing to satellite data showing "no significant warming" of the atmosphere, contrary to the surface warming. The predicted warming, she wrote, "simply isn't happening according to the satellite[s]." At the time, there was a legitimate case that satellites were more accurate than ground stations, which might be skewed by the unusual warmth of cities where many are sited.
"There was an extraordinary campaign by the denial machine to find and hire scientists to sow dissent and make it appear that the research community was deeply divided," says Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. Those recruits blitzed the media. Driven by notions of fairness and objectivity, the press "qualified every mention of human influence on climate change with 'some scientists believe,' where the reality is that the vast preponderance of scientific opinion accepts that human-caused [greenhouse] emissions are contributing to warming," says Reilly, the former EPA chief. "The pursuit of balance has not done justice" to the science. Talk radio goes further, with Rush Limbaugh telling listeners this year that "more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is not likely to significantly contribute to the greenhouse effect. It's just all part of the hoax." In the new NEWSWEEK Poll, 42 percent said the press "exaggerates the threat of climate change."
Now naysayers tried a new tactic: lists and petitions meant to portray science as hopelessly divided. Just before Kyoto, S. Fred Singer released the "Leipzig Declaration on Global Climate Change." Singer, who fled Nazi-occupied Austria as a boy, had run the U.S. weather-satellite program in the early 1960s. In the Leipzig petition, just over 100 scientists and others, including TV weathermen, said they "cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes." Unfortunately, few of the Leipzig signers actually did climate research; they just kibitzed about other people's. Scientific truth is not decided by majority vote, of course (ask Galileo), but the number of researchers whose empirical studies find that the world is warming and that human activity is partly responsible numbered in the thousands even then. The IPCC report issued this year, for instance, was written by more than 800 climate researchers and vetted by 2,500 scientists from 130 nations.
Although Clinton did not even try to get the Senate to ratify the Kyoto treaty (he knew a hopeless cause when he saw one), industry was taking no chances. In April 1998 a dozen people from the denial machine—including the Marshall Institute, Fred Singer's group and Exxon—met at the American Petroleum Institute's Washington headquarters. They proposed a $5 million campaign, according to a leaked eight-page memo, to convince the public that the science of global warming is riddled with controversy and uncertainty. The plan was to train up to 20 "respected climate scientists" on media—and public—outreach with the aim of "raising questions about and undercutting the 'prevailing scientific wisdom' " and, in particular, "the Kyoto treaty's scientific underpinnings" so that elected officials "will seek to prevent progress toward implementation." The plan, once exposed in the press, "was never implemented as policy," says Marshall's William O'Keefe, who was then at API.
The GOP control of Congress for six of Clinton's eight years in office meant the denial machine had a receptive audience. Although Republicans such as Sens. John McCain, Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee spurned the denial camp, and Democrats such as Congressman John Dingell adamantly oppose greenhouse curbs that might hurt the auto and other industries, for the most part climate change has been a bitterly partisan issue. Republicans have also received significantly more campaign cash from the energy and other industries that dispute climate science. Every proposed climate bill "ran into a buzz saw of denialism," says Manik Roy of the Pew Center on Climate Change, a research and advocacy group, who was a Senate staffer at the time. "There was no rational debate in Congress on climate change."
The reason for the inaction was clear. "The questioning of the science made it to the Hill through senators who parroted reports funded by the American Petroleum Institute and other advocacy groups whose entire purpose was to confuse people on the science of global warming," says Sen. John Kerry. "There would be ads challenging the science right around the time we were trying to pass legislation. It was pure, raw pressure combined with false facts." Nor were states stepping where Washington feared to tread. "I did a lot of testifying before state legislatures—in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Alaska—that thought about taking action," says Singer. "I said that the observed warming was and would be much, much less than climate models calculated, and therefore nothing to worry about."
But the science was shifting under the denial machine. In January 2000, the National Academy of Sciences skewered its strongest argument. Contrary to the claim that satellites finding no warming are right and ground stations showing warming are wrong, it turns out that the satellites are off. (Basically, engineers failed to properly correct for changes in their orbit.) The planet is indeed warming, and at a rate since 1980 much greater than in the past.
Just months after the Academy report, Singer told a Senate panel that "the Earth's atmosphere is not warming and fears about human-induced storms, sea-level rise and other disasters are misplaced." And as studies fingering humans as a cause of climate change piled up, he had a new argument: a cabal was silencing good scientists who disagreed with the "alarmist" reports. "Global warming has become an article of faith for many, with its own theology and orthodoxy," Singer wrote in The Washington Times. "Its believers are quite fearful of any scientific dissent."
With the Inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, the denial machine expected to have friends in the White House. But despite Bush's oil-patch roots, naysayers weren't sure they could count on him: as a candidate, he had pledged to cap carbon dioxide emissions. Just weeks into his term, the Competitive Enterprise Institute heard rumors that the draft of a speech Bush was preparing included a passage reiterating that pledge. CEI's Myron Ebell called conservative pundit Robert Novak, who had booked Bush's EPA chief, Christie Todd Whitman, on CNN's "Crossfire." He asked her about the line, and within hours the possibility of a carbon cap was the talk of the Beltway. "We alerted anyone we thought could have influence and get the line, if it was in the speech, out," says CEI president Fred Smith, who counts this as another notch in CEI's belt. The White House declines to comment.
Bush not only disavowed his campaign pledge. In March, he withdrew from the Kyoto treaty. After the about-face, MIT's Lindzen told NEWSWEEK in 2001, he was summoned to the White House. He told Bush he'd done the right thing. Even if you accept the doomsday forecasts, Lindzen said, Kyoto would hardly touch the rise in temperatures. The treaty, he said, would "do nothing, at great expense."
Bush's reversal came just weeks after the IPCC released its third assessment of the burgeoning studies of climate change. Its conclusion: the 1990s were very likely the warmest decade on record, and recent climate change is partly "attributable to human activities." The weather itself seemed to be conspiring against the skeptics. The early years of the new millennium were setting heat records. The summer of 2003 was especially brutal, with a heat wave in Europe killing tens of thousands of people. Consultant Frank Luntz, who had been instrumental in the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994, suggested a solution to the PR mess. In a memo to his GOP clients, he advised them that to deal with global warming, "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue." They should "challenge the science," he wrote, by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view." Although few of the experts did empirical research of their own (MIT's Lindzen was an exception), the public didn't notice. To most civilians, a scientist is a scientist.
Challenging the science wasn't a hard sell on Capitol Hill. "In the House, the leadership generally viewed it as impermissible to go along with anything that would even imply that climate change was genuine," says Goldston, the former Republican staffer. "There was a belief on the part of many members that the science was fraudulent, even a Democratic fantasy. A lot of the information they got was from conservative think tanks and industry." When in 2003 the Senate called for a national strategy to cut greenhouse gases, for instance, climate naysayers were "giving briefings and talking to staff," says Goldston. "There was a constant flow of information—largely misinformation." Since the House version of that bill included no climate provisions, the two had to be reconciled. "The House leadership staff basically said, 'You know we're not going to accept this,' and [Senate staffers] said, 'Yeah, we know,' and the whole thing disappeared relatively jovially without much notice," says Goldston. "It was such a foregone conclusion."
Especially when the denial machine had a new friend in a powerful place. In 2003 James Inhofe of Oklahoma took over as chairman of the environment committee. That summer he took to the Senate floor and, in a two-hour speech, disputed the claim of scientific consensus on climate change. Despite the discovery that satellite data showing no warming were wrong, he argued that "satellites, widely considered the most accurate measure of global temperatures, have confirmed" the absence of atmospheric warming. Might global warming, he asked, be "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" Inhofe made his mark holding hearing after hearing to suggest that the answer is yes. For one, on a study finding a dramatic increase in global temperatures unprecedented in the last 1,000 years, he invited a scientist who challenged that conclusion (in a study partly underwritten with $53,000 from the American Petroleum Institute), one other doubter and the scientist who concluded that recent global temperatures were spiking. Just as Luntz had suggested, the witness table presented a tableau of scientific disagreement.
Every effort to pass climate legislation during the George W. Bush years was stopped in its tracks. When Senators McCain and Joe Lieberman were fishing for votes for their bipartisan effort in 2003, a staff member for Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska explained to her counterpart in Lieberman's office that Stevens "is aware there is warming in Alaska, but he's not sure how much it's caused by human activity or natural cycles," recalls Tim Profeta, now director of an environmental-policy institute at Duke University. "I was hearing the basic argument of the skeptics—a brilliant strategy to go after the science. And it was working." Stevens voted against the bill, which failed 43-55. When the bill came up again the next year, "we were contacted by a lot of lobbyists from API and Exxon-Mobil," says Mark Helmke, the climate aide to GOP Sen. Richard Lugar. "They'd bring up how the science wasn't certain, how there were a lot of skeptics out there." It went down to defeat again.
Killing bills in Congress was only one prong of the denial machine's campaign. It also had to keep public opinion from demanding action on greenhouse emissions, and that meant careful management of what federal scientists and officials wrote and said. "If they presented the science honestly, it would have brought public pressure for action," says Rick Piltz, who joined the federal Climate Science Program in 1995. By appointing former coal and oil lobbyists to key jobs overseeing climate policy, he found, the administration made sure that didn't happen. Following the playbook laid out at the 1998 meeting at the American Petroleum Institute, officials made sure that every report and speech cast climate science as dodgy, uncertain, controversial—and therefore no basis for making policy. Ex-oil lobbyist Philip Cooney, working for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as "lack of understanding" and "considerable uncertainty." A short section on climate in another report was cut entirely. The White House "directed us to remove all mentions of it," says Piltz, who resigned in protest. An oil lobbyist faxed Cooney, "You are doing a great job."
The response to the international climate panel's latest report, in February, showed that greenhouse doubters have a lot of fight left in them. In addition to offering $10,000 to scientists willing to attack the report, which so angered Boxer, they are emphasizing a new theme. Even if the world is warming now, and even if that warming is due in part to the greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels, there's nothing to worry about. As Lindzen wrote in a guest editorial in NEWSWEEK International in April, "There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe."
To some extent, greenhouse denial is now running on automatic pilot. "Some members of Congress have completely internalized this," says Pew's Roy, and therefore need no coaching from the think tanks and contrarian scientists who for 20 years kept them stoked with arguments. At a hearing last month on the Kyoto treaty, GOP Congressman Dana Rohrabacher asked whether "changes in the Earth's temperature in the past—all of these glaciers moving back and forth—and the changes that we see now" might be "a natural occurrence." (Hundreds of studies have ruled that out.) "I think it's a bit grandiose for us to believe ... that [human activities are] going to change some major climate cycle that's going on." Inhofe has told allies he will filibuster any climate bill that mandates greenhouse cuts.
Still, like a great beast that has been wounded, the denial machine is not what it once was. In the NEWSWEEK Poll, 38 percent of those surveyed identified climate change as the nation's gravest environmental threat, three times the number in 2000. After ExxonMobil was chastised by senators for giving $19 million over the years to the Competitive Enterprise Institute and others who are "producing very questionable data" on climate change, as Sen. Jay Rockefeller said, the company has cut back its support for such groups. In June, a spokesman said ExxonMobil did not doubt the risks posed by climate change, telling reporters, "We're very much not a denier." In yet another shock, Bush announced at the weekend that he would convene a global-warming summit next month, with a 2008 goal of cutting greenhouse emissions. That astonished the remaining naysayers. "I just can't imagine the administration would look to mandatory [emissions caps] after what we had with Kyoto," said a GOP Senate staffer, who did not want to be named criticizing the president. "I mean, what a disaster!"
With its change of heart, ExxonMobil is more likely to win a place at the negotiating table as Congress debates climate legislation. That will be crucially important to industry especially in 2009, when naysayers may no longer be able to count on a friend in the White House nixing man-datory greenhouse curbs. All the Democratic presidential contenders have called global warming a real threat, and promise to push for cuts similar to those being passed by California and other states. In the GOP field, only McCain—long a leader on the issue—supports that policy. Fred Thompson belittles findings that human activities are changing the climate, and Rudy Giuliani backs the all-volunteer greenhouse curbs of (both) Presidents Bush.
Look for the next round of debate to center on what Americans are willing to pay and do to stave off the worst of global warming. So far the answer seems to be, not much. The NEWSWEEK Poll finds less than half in favor of requiring high-mileage cars or energy-efficient appliances and buildings. No amount of white papers, reports and studies is likely to change that. If anything can, it will be the climate itself. This summer, Texas was hit by exactly the kind of downpours and flooding expected in a greenhouse world, and Las Vegas and other cities broiled in record triple-digit temperatures. Just last week the most accurate study to date concluded that the length of heat waves in Europe has doubled, and their frequency nearly tripled, in the past century. The frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has already doubled in the last century. Snowpack whose water is crucial to both cities and farms is diminishing. It's enough to make you wish that climate change were a hoax, rather than the reality it is.
With Eve Conant, Sam Stein and Eleanor Clift in Washington and Matthew Philips in New York
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20122975/site/newsweek/