Earth Eater

Bush, China, Balk at climate Report

The United States and China want to amend a major report by U.N.-sponsored climate researchers to play down its conclusion that quick, affordable action can limit the worst effects of global warming, according to documents reviewed Monday by The Associated Press.

The critiques, among hundreds of government comments on the draft document, are the prelude to what is expected to be a contentious weeklong meeting as scientists and national delegations wrangle over final wording in the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to be issued Friday.

Two previous IPCC reports this year painted a dire picture of a future in which unabated greenhouse gas emissions could drive global temperatures up as much as 11 degrees by 2100, and said animal and plant life was already affected by warmer and rising seas, spreading drought and other effects.

The upcoming third report will look at technologies and policies that could help head off damaging climate change, and at what cost, and discuss feasible goals for setting a ceiling on greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere.

The week is shaping up as a test between the Europeans, who want a relatively low ceiling and speedy action, and the Bush administration, whose comments on the draft summary indicate it wants a document envisioning higher ceilings and a longer view on action.

The IPCC assessment, the first in six years, will provide fresh background for ongoing international negotiations over a climate regime to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

The 1997 Kyoto pact requires 35 European and other nations to reduce industrial, transportation and agricultural emissions of carbon dioxide and other warming gases by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Scientists believe emissions must be cut 50 percent or more within decades to avert drastic climate change.

President Bush rejected Kyoto's mandatory cuts, contending they would hobble the U.S. economy. China and other poor developing countries were exempted.

The draft of the third report, obtained by the AP, says greenhouse emissions can be cut below current levels if the world takes such steps as shifting away from coal and other fossil fuels, investing in energy efficiency and working to halt deforestation, which eliminates carbon "sinks."

The report, prepared and reviewed by hundreds of researchers, says that by quickly embracing an ideal basket of technological options - both already available and being developed - the world can stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to around 450 parts per million, slightly higher than the current 435 ppm.

Some scientists believe a 450-ppm ceiling might limit the global temperature rise to 3.6 degrees - 2 degrees Celsius - above the world's preindustrial temperatures, a level that might avoid the worst damage. Some economists believe, however, that a 450-ppm ceiling is unrealistic, and 550 ppm is more achievable.

Comments on the draft by Germany and the European Union seek to highlight a scenario with a 445-535-ppm range and the 2-degree-Celsius ceiling. The Europeans emphasize a passage on action in the next "two or three decades," while a U.S. comment seeks to replace that with a reference to "the end of the century" and to a scenario of 500-550 ppm concentrations. That might produce temperatures 5 to 6 degrees above preindustrial levels.

The U.S. wants clauses inserted saying the cost of available technologies to reduce emissions and stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations "could be unacceptably high" and calling for a greater emphasis on "advanced technologies," many of which are aimed at extending the use of coal.

The United States and China also criticized the draft's economic projections, which conclude that stabilizing gases to establish the 2-degree-Celsius ceiling would cost less than 3 percent of the global gross domestic product (GDP) over two decades - compared with 3-percent yearly growth currently. China complained the number of studies supporting that optimistic forecast is "relatively small."

The damage from unabated climate change, meanwhile, might cost the global economy between 5 percent and 20 percent of GDP every year, according to a British government report last year.

In its defense, the United States said it is working to promote energy efficiency, vehicle fuel efficiency and clean-coal technology while sustaining economic growth.

"Our goal throughout the IPCC process is for the reports to best reflect the latest state of knowledge on addressing global climate change so that these reports are useful to the policy community and are supported by scientific and economic data," Harlan Watson, U.S. delegation head, said by e-mail.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the climate change panel, said "every country" would have a chance to express its views and "ultimately it's a balanced assessment of the science that will prevail."

More than 200 delegates chosen by 119 countries will examine the IPCC's report this week and recommend changes before it is finalized.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

Sorting out the truth on global warming

Sorting out the truth on global warming

By BILL ADAIR

WASHINGTON - A major international study recently concluded there was overwhelming evidence that humans were causing global warming. But that didn't quiet the skeptics. They continue to raise doubts, suggesting that everything from sunspots to cattle flatulence is causing the earth to warm, and insisting that scientists were stretching the truth.

"Every weather extreme is global warming!" said radio host Rush Limbaugh three days after the release of the report. "These people, they're brilliant little socialists and communists. They know how to propagandize; they know how to keep this alive."

Global warming has been called the most dire issue facing the planet, and yet, if you're not a scientist, it can be difficult to sort out the truth.

Here's what scientists involved in the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say about the skeptics' points. The IPCC involved more than 2,500 scientists from 130 nations reviewing thousands of climate studies.

Cattle flatulence creates more greenhouse gas than cars.

Variations of this point have been made by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia who made a crack about it in a recent dissenting opinion and conservative columnist George Will. There is some truth to it, although it is sometimes exaggerated.

Cattle and other ruminant animals are surprisingly large producers of methane, the No. 2 greenhouse gas. When they eat plant material, it combines with bacteria in their stomachs to produce methane. U.S. cows emit about 5.5-million metric tons of methane each year, accounting for 20 percent of the nation's methane emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The skeptics often mention animal flatulence to trivialize the causes of warming, but Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate scientist who was a reviewer on the IPCC study, says more gas comes from the front of the animals than the rear.

"It's not really flatulence," he said. "It's really burps."

The skeptics have sometimes exaggerated its effect as a greenhouse gas. The scientists' best estimate says the impact of all animal-produced methane worldwide is roughly the same as the carbon dioxide produced by cars and trucks in the United States. But some skeptics neglect to include those qualifiers and incorrectly contend that cows alone create more greenhouse gas than all cars, trucks and planes.

Sunspots are a major factor in global warming.

This theory, promoted by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and others, seems to make a lot of sense. We know there are fluctuations in heat from the sun, so it seems logical that they could make the Earth hotter.

But the landmark IPCC report released in February said solar fluctuations were not an important factor in the dramatic warming of the Earth in recent decades. Scientists say the amount of heat from the sun has not increased significantly in the past 30 years, even though global temperatures did.

Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University who worked on the IPCC report, said solar variations "are not the dominant contributor to warming in the past 50 years. Greenhouse gases are the dominant factor."

Studies show Antarctica is cooling, which contradicts the belief that the Earth is warming.

Like other points from the skeptics, this one - from novelist Michael Crichton, conservative author Ann Coulter and others - has a germ of truth, but has been exaggerated.

Indeed, a 2002 study found that a small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had cooled over a five-year period. It also found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had cooled than had warmed.

The study, by University of Illinois at Chicago professor Peter Doran and other scientists, drew tremendous news coverage. It ran counter to people's assumption that global warming would occur uniformly throughout the planet, and quickly became a talking point for the skeptics.

Doran says his research was taken out of context and wildly exaggerated. Although it showed one portion of Antarctica was cooling, it was wrongly cited as evidence against global warming, he wrote in the New York Times.

Scientists say his findings reflected Antarctica's unique weather patterns, which keep one portion of the continent cooler while the peninsula, which stretches toward South America, has been warming faster than the global average.

Just 30 years ago, there was talk of an ice age coming.

Limbaugh, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and many others make this point to suggest that scientists are fickle. If the experts were pursuing ice-age theories 30 years ago, the skeptics ask, how can they now believe the Earth is warming?

Indeed, Newsweek published a story in 1975 headlined "The Cooling World."

"There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth," the article warned, citing a "sudden, large increase" in snow cover and a drop in the amount of sunshine reaching the continental United States.

Today, climate scientists say that was unfounded media hype. Although there were a few studies that suggested the possibility of global cooling in the 1970s, they did not represent a consensus of the world's scientists reviewing the thousands of studies, as the IPCC's reports do today.

"With all due respect to your noble profession," Schmidt said in an interview, "I would have to caution people not to believe everything they read in Newsweek or Time."

The "hockey stick" theory has been debunked.

Charts showing the increase in global temperatures resemble a hockey stick. They show temperatures relatively flat for centuries and then increase sharply in the last 100 years, like the blade on the stick. But skeptics such as Inhofe often say that this theory has been proven wrong and that "the hockey stick is broken."

Scientists involved with IPCC study acknowledge there were minor problems with supplementary information in the original 1998 study that became known as the hockey stick report. Those problems were identified and corrections were made.

But the scientists say the problems were insignificant and did not undermine the core finding of that study and many others since: The Earth's average temperature changed relatively little over centuries but then went up dramatically in post-industrial times.

Said Schmidt: "The hockey stick lives."

What's the big deal if average temperatures increase a few degrees?

This point has been raised by Thomas Gale Moore, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the author of Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry about Global Warming.

"It's absurd to believe that we live in the best of all possible times and that we can't adjust" to a temperature change, he recently told Newsweek. He says more people die from cold than warmth and says an increase of a few degrees could prevent thousands of deaths.

Indeed, scientists acknowledge that there are benefits from global warming. They noted at a news conference last week that some apples taste better because the growing season is longer. And as the Earth warms, frigid locales will be more temperate and presumably more desirable.

But the scientists who wrote the IPCC study say they are concerned because the Earth has been warming so fast.

"With just a small increase in the average temperature, you get a big increase in the extremes," said Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and a lead author of the IPCC study.

Scientists believe that as the Earth warms, weather patterns will bring more intense droughts to certain areas and more powerful storms in other places. As temperatures warm, the atmosphere holds more water, leading to more intense rain and more frequent flooding.

Said Oppenheimer, the Princeton professor: "The more we learn, the more we find reasons to be concerned."

Researcher Angie Drobnic Holan contributed to this report. Washington bureau chief Bill Adair can be reached at adair@sptimes.com or (202) 463-0575.

For more information on the IPCC study, go to http://www.ipcc.ch/

THe UNchained Goddess: 50 years later...

For FIFTY YEARS scientists have known about global warming. This excerpt is from the well known educational documentary "Unchained Goddess" produced by Frank Capra for Bell Labs for their television program "The Bell Telephone Hour." It was so well made, that it went on to live a continued life in middle school science classrooms across the nation for decades.

Nearly half a century before Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth," this film was made. But what does it reveal? That our scientists have known for over two generations about this danger, but our politicians and citizenry have chosen to ignore the dangerous implications of this fact until it really is too late to avoid the preventable consequences.

BRAZIL: South Could Become Stage for Water Wars

the Guarani aquifer

BRAZIL: South Could Become Stage for Water Wars by Mario Osava, Inter Press Service March 21st, 2003

Developing countries rich in water resources could become scenarios of war similar to what is happening today in Iraq if water continues to be privatized and sold like any other merchandise or "good", warned Leonardo Morelli, the organizer of the Social Water Forum, taking place in Brazil. "Today war is being waged over oil, tomorrow it will be for water," Morelli, who is also the coordinator of the Brazilian Shout for Water Movement, told IPS in a telephone interview in a break in the debates and seminars that have drawn activists from around South America this week to Cota, a city on the outskirts of Sao Paulo. Conflicts on a planetary scale could arise from the fact that the developing South has the world's greatest reserves of freshwater, while "those who have the money are in the industrialized North," he augured. Morelli pointed out that Israel has just 500 liters of water a year per person, while in Brazil and Paraguay the average is 10,000 and 63,000 liters a year per person, respectively. Water, a "patrimony of humanity," must not be governed by market forces, but by public systems based on the concepts of cooperation and solidarity, due to the possibility of growing shortages caused by pollution and the wasteful use of water, he argued. Control over Iraq is strategic not only because of the country's oil reserves, but also due to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which make that country important in a region with scarce sources of water, noted U.S. writer Norman Mailer in an article on the Iraq crisis published earlier this month by the Brazilian newspaper O Estado de Sao Paulo. The Social Water Forum and similar gatherings in the northern Italian city of Florence, New Delhi, India, and New York are being held as sort of counterpoints to the third World Water Forum, which opened Mar. 16 in Kyoto, Japan. Some 10,000 experts and representatives from 160 countries, international bodies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are taking part in the World Water Forum in Japan, which ends on Mar. 23. The parallel social forums, organized by environmental groups and social movements, are being held to protest the approach taken by the Kyoto forum and to defend water as a human right and a common resource, whose management must be under public control. The roughly 400 experts and delegates of NGOs participating in the Social Water Forum in Brazil have been discussing the social issues that arise in the global debates on managing water. The participants maintain that clean and affordable water for all is a human right, and that water management must be environmentally sustainable and socially fair. Prevailing at the Kyoto meeting, on the other hand, are financial aspects, "the economy-based focus of the World Bank," like the idea of charging user fees and thus controlling water consumption, Morelli criticized. That approach was confirmed, he said, by the Moroccan government's decision to reward the King Hassan II Great World Water Prize, which includes an award of 100,000 dollars, to the president of Brazil's National Water Agency, Jerson Kelman, at the third World Water Forum. According to the prize-givers, Kelman led the effort to put together a legal and institutional framework for an integrated water resources management system in Brazil. But Morelli complained that what the National Water Agency did was to introduce a water management model that favored powerful economic players, at the expense of environmental and social aspects, and allowed power plants to use too much water, thus triggering the 2001 energy crisis. It also allowed transnational corporations to gain control over underground water, which they sell as mineral water, while the Brazilian population must make do with surface water, which is far more exposed to pollution, he added. The Social Water Forum is promoting a plan for mobilization by civil society in defence of water sources that Brazil shares with neighboring Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, such as the Amazon jungle rivers and the Rio de la Plata. The plan also covers the Guarani aquifer, one of the world's largest water reservoirs, which extends from south-central Brazil to Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay (the four countries that make up the Mercosur or Southern Common Market trade bloc). The idea is to promote coordinated actions by a network of social and environmental groups from the Mercosur nations as well as the eight countries that share the Amazon jungle, and file complaints with the International Court of Justice in the Hague over serious violations of the right of all living things to water, said Morelli. One illustration of the problems caused by the privatization of water was a series of social protests in the central Bolivian department of Cochabamba between Apr. 4-11, 2000, in which several people were killed and almost 200 injured. Peasant farmers in Bolivia who depend on irrigation to grow their crops took to the streets to protest a government decision to grant a 40-year privatization contract over all water sources to a private company, Virginia Amurrio, one of the leaders of the Cochabamba Federation of Irrigators, told IPS by phone from Cota. The privatization allowed Aguas del Tunari, a subsidiary of the giant Bechtel corporation, to charge fees for the water consumed, at prices pegged to the dollar, to which a tax was added. That led to an immediate skyrocketing of utility fees, which climbed by as much as 200 percent in some cases. In a country where the minimum wage is less than 100 dollars a month, some families were paying 20 dollars a month in water bills. The protesters also complained that the privatization "failed to respect the rights and customs of the local communities that depended on irrigation," said Amurrio. The protesters blocked roads and engaged in "fierce battles" with the police until the law on Potable Water and Sanitation, which authorized the privatization, was repealed and replaced by legislation that guaranteed life-long access to water resources for the roughly 15,000 peasant families in the region. Women, who bear the main responsibility for fetching water in that region, took part in organizing the protests. In the confrontations with the police, they "joined the fray with slingshots, stones, and even biting," when they saw their men "being injured or killed," said Amurrio. But small farmers in Bolivia must now fight another threat, a law on national parks, under which private companies could be granted concessions to administer and exploit natural resources, including water, she lamented.

Cell phones cause of bee Colony Collapse Disorder?

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees

By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross

Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.

Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.

Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting.

Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

Global Warming a "Serious military threat"

Global warming may lead to war 16/04/2007 11:23 - (SA)

Washington - Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" with terrorism worsening and the US will likely be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report. Joining calls already made by scientists and environmental activists, the retired US military leaders, including the former Army chief of staff and President George W Bush's former chief Middle East peace negotiator, called on the US government to make major cuts in emissions of gases that cause global warming. The report warned that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicted. "Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," former US Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan told Associated Press Radio. "Everybody needs to start paying attention to what's going on. I don't think this is a particularly hard sell in the Pentagon. ... We're paying attention to what those security implications are." Gen Anthony "Tony" Zinni, Bush's former Middle East envoy, said in the report: "It's not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability, or climate change and terrorism." The report was issued by the Alexandria, Virginia-based, national security think-tank The CNA Corporation and was written by six retired admirals and five retired generals. They warned of a future of rampant disease, water shortages and flooding that will make already dicey areas - such as the Middle East, Asia and Africa - even worse. 'Must become a more constructive partner' "Weakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflicts, extremism and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies," the report said. "The US will be drawn more frequently into these situations." In a veiled reference to Bush's refusal to join an international treaty to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the report said the US government "must become a more constructive partner" with other nations to fight global warming and cope with its consequences. The Bush administration has declined mandatory emission cuts in favour of voluntary methods. Other nations have committed to required reductions that kick in within a few years. "We will pay for this one way or another," wrote Zinni, former commander of US Central Command. "We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll." Top climate scientists said the report makes sense and increased national security risk is a legitimate global warming side-effect. The report is "pretty impressive", but may be too alarmist because it may take longer than 30 years for some of these things to happen, said Stanford scientist Terry Root, a co-author of this month's international scientific report on the effects of global warming on life on Earth. But the instability will happen sometime, Root agreed. "We're going to have a war over water," Root said. "There's just not going to be enough water around for us to have for us to need to live with and to provide for the natural environment."

Inuit: Life is very much out of synch

BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhuanet) -- So what do you think, will those who scoff at scientific proof global warming is harming the Earth's Arctic region listen to the people who have to live -- and die -- with its impact on their environment and culture?

Will they listen to Will Steger, a 62-year-old Minnesotan who has witnessed the effects during his 43 years of travel and living with the indigenous people of the Arctic?

"This is really ground zero for global warming," said Will Steger, speaking by satellite phone from a small Inuit village near Iqaluit about 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle. "This is where a culture has lived for 5,000 years, relying on a very delicate, interconnected ecosystem and, one by one, small pegs of that ecosystem are being pulled out."

Steger made the first journey to the North Pole by dogsled without resupply in 1986. He is now sledding with Inuit guides for three months across Baffin Island, the northeastern corner of Nunavut, with two teams of huskies and a cameraman.

He is charting his 1,200-mile adventure on his website, and making a documentary about how Inuit hunters are being forced to adapt to a warming Arctic Ocean and melting polar ice cap. In June, he will testify before a U.S. Senate committee on climate change.

Steger said hunters he meets are describing creatures they have no words for in their language, such as robins, finches and dolphins. He said hunters are falling through thinning ice and dying.

"All of these villages have lost people on the ice," Steger said. "When you have a small village of 300 or 400 people, losing three or four of their senior hunters, it's a big loss.

"A lot of the elders will no longer go out on the sea ice because their knowledge will not work anymore. What they've learned and passed on for 5,000 years is no longer functional," he continued. "They can't build igloos anymore; everything is just upside down up here."

Will they listen to Meeka Mike as she sits on the floor of her cedar house with friends while they sew a pair of caribou hunting pants she will wear on her next supply trip by snowmobile and wooden sled to Steger's expedition?

Mike says the thinning of the ice became noticeable about 10 years ago, forcing Arctic animals to migrate farther north.

"It takes longer now to get out to our hunting areas because we can't access it by ice," she explained. "The ice freezes much later and therefore it's thinner and breaks off during the full-moon tide."

Life, she says, is "very much out of sync."

"Unfortunately, you are the people who cause most of this climate change," she smiled gently and said to an American journalist.

Will they listen to a 47-year-old mother trekking on foot alone since March 6 on a 60-day journey across 475 miles of frozen ocean to reach the North Pole?

Rosie Stancer uses a compass, the sun and satellites to navigate and carries food, fuel and a shotgun to drive away polar bears on a sled she drags behind her.

If she makes it she will be the first woman to have walked solo to both Poles. She was the second woman to trek alone to the South Pole in 2004.

She is studying global warming effects for a polar research institute at Cambridge University.

"I'll be monitoring the temperatures, wind direction and comparing the ice conditions to 10 years ago," Stancer said in a telephone interview from Resolute Bay. "You know, everyone is going ooh-la-la and being indignant about our climate change. But what did they expect. Why are people surprised that this is a living, breathing planet?

"If I can come back as an ordinary person with a firsthand account, that message will hit home and awaken individual consciences about cleaning up our own back yard."

But will they listen?

(Agencies)

Global Warming Pollution Up in 48 U.S.States Since 1990

Global warming pollution increased in all but two states nationwide between 1990 and 2004, according to “The Carbon Boom,” a new analysis of state fossil fuel consumption data released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). This is the first time that 2004 state-by-state data on carbon dioxide emissions have been released. Nationally, carbon dioxide emissions increased by 18 percent over the 15-year period.

“Given the risks from global warming, it’s incredibly irresponsible for the U.S. to increase its global warming pollution. It’s as if the doctor told us that we need to go on a serious diet, but we’ve gone straight for the Ben & Jerry’s,” said Emily Figdor, director of U.S. PIRG’s global warming program.

U.S. PIRG’s report comes less than a week after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. body charged with assessing the scientific record on global warming, released its consensus report on the current and projected impacts of global warming. The report warned of increasing droughts, floods, heat waves, water stress, forest fires, and coastal flooding in the United States but concluded that “many impacts can be avoided, reduced, or delayed” by quickly and significantly reducing global warming pollution.

“Global warming pollution is skyrocketing in the United States just as scientists are sounding alarms that we must rapidly reduce pollution to protect future generations. This report is a wake-up call to cap pollution levels now before it is too late,” said Figdor.

Using data compiled by the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. PIRG’s new report examines trends in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption between 1990 and 2004, the most recent year for which state-by-state data are available.

Major findings of the report include:

• U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption grew from almost 5 billion metric tons to almost 5.9 billion metric tons between 1990 and 2004, an increase of 18 percent. Emissions increased in every state but Delaware, Massachusetts, and the District of Columbia. Regionally, carbon dioxide emissions grew the most in the Southeast over the 15 year period. The states with the largest absolute increases in carbon dioxide emissions between 1990 and 2004 are Texas, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Georgia.

• The electric power sector—particularly coal-fired power plants—accounted for more than half (55 percent) of the U.S. emissions increase. The Great Lakes/Midwest region experienced the most dramatic increase in carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants between 1990 and 2004. The states with the largest absolute increases in carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants during this time period are Illinois, Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, and Indiana.

• The transportation sector—particularly cars and light trucks—accounted for 40 percent of the nation’s overall increase in carbon dioxide emissions. Regionally, carbon dioxide emissions from the transportation sector grew the most in the Southeast over the 15 year period. The states with the largest absolute increases in carbon dioxide emissions from motor gasoline consumption between 1990 and 2004 are Texas, Florida, California, Georgia, and Arizona.

“The good news is that we have the technology at our fingertips to cut global warming pollution and forge a cleaner, more secure energy future,” said Figdor.

The United States could substantially reduce its global warming pollution by using existing technologies to make power plants, businesses, homes, and cars more efficient and increasing the use of clean, renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar power.

The Safe Climate Act (H.R. 1590), introduced by Representative Henry Waxman (Calif.) in the House, and the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (S. 309), introduced by Senators Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Barbara Boxer (Calif.) in the Senate, would limit total U.S. global warming pollution to levels that current science says are needed to prevent the worst effects of global warming. The bills would freeze U.S. global warming emissions in 2010 and reduce emissions by about 15 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

“To protect future generations, our leaders must take decisive action to cut global warming pollution. U.S. PIRG calls on Congress to pass the only bills that do what scientists say we need to do—the Safe Climate Act in the House and the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act in the Senate,” concluded Figdor. - USPIRG News

ENDGAME: DERRICK JENSEN

Christian Right: Preparing for the "End"

Members of the radical Christian End Times movement are being taught to believe that America is ruled by evil, clandestine organizations disguised as liberal groups. As a result, the fearful are hoping for the end.

http://www.alternet.org/stories/50366/

The Gilead Baptist Church, outside Detroit, is on a four-lane highway called South Telegraph Road. The drive down South Telegraph Road to the church, a warehouse-like structure surrounded by black asphalt parking lots, is a depressing gantlet of boxy, cut-rate motels with names like Melody Lane and Best Value Inn.

The highway is flanked by a flat-roofed Walgreens, a Blockbuster, discount liquor stores, a Taco Bell, a McDonald's, a Bob's Big Boy, Sunoco and Citgo gas stations, a Ford dealership, Nails USA, The Dollar Palace, Pro Quick Lube and U-Haul.

The tawdry display of cheap consumer goods, emblazoned with neon, lines both sides of the road, a dirty brown strip in the middle. It is a sad reminder that something has gone terribly wrong with America, with its inhuman disregard for beauty and balance, its obsession with speed and utilitarianism, its crass commercialism and its oversized SUVs and trucks and greasy junk food. It is part of our numbing assault against community and connectedness.

Ten or fifteen minutes of negotiating the traffic down South Telegraph Road makes the bizarre attraction of the End Times -- the obliteration of this world of alienation, noise and distortion -- comprehensible. The manufacturing jobs in the Detroit auto plants nearby are largely gone, outsourced to nations with cheaper labor. The paint is flaking off the cramped two-story houses that lie in ugly grid patterns off the highway.

The plagues of alcoholism, divorce, drug abuse, poverty and domestic violence make the internal life here as depressing as the external one. And those gathering today in this church wait for the final, welcome relief of the purgative of violence, the vast, bloody cleansing that will lift them up into the heavens and leave the world they despise -- the one that was devastated by corporatism -- to be racked by plagues and flood and fire until it and all those whom they blame for the debacle of their lives are consumed and destroyed by God. It is a theology of despair. And for many, it can't happen soon enough.

The guru of the End Times movement is a small, elderly, gnome-like man with dyed coal-black hair, a battery-powered earpiece and a pedantic, cold demeanor. He is Timothy LaHaye, a Southern Baptist minister and the co-author, along with Jerry Jenkins, of the "Left Behind" series of Christian apocalyptic thrillers that provide the graphic details of raw mayhem and cruelty that God will unleash on all nonbelievers when Christ returns and raptures Christians into heaven. The novels are the best-selling books in America, with over 62 million in print. They have been made into movies, as well as a graphic video game in which teenagers can blow away nonbelievers and the army of the Antichrist on the streets of New York City.

The global nightmare that leads to the end of history is a visceral and disturbing expression of what believers feel about themselves and our world. The horror of apocalyptic violence -- the final aesthetic of the movement -- at once terrifies and thrills followers. It feeds dark fantasies of revenge and empowerment.

This theology of despair is empowered by widespread poverty, violent crime, incurable diseases, global warming, war in the Middle East and the threat of nuclear calamity. All these events presage the longed-for obliteration of the Earth and the glorious moment of Christ's return. But until then believers are told they must battle Satan. And Satan comes in many guises. In churches across the United States believers are being girded for a holy war, one as self-destructive as that preached by radical Islam.

"We are at war with the religion of Islam," Gary Frazier, another popular leader, tells the crowd in the church outside Detroit, "and it is not a handful of radical Islamists who are taking over the religion and hijacking it. The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, today if you read the Koran, and any person who reads their Koran, the holy book of the Muslims, and believes what the book says, over a hundred times it calls for the putting to death of any person that does not embrace the teachings of Mohammed.

"Can you explain to me how in the West that we would understand a person who would strap dynamite upon themselves and blow themselves up along with innocent men and women and children with the promise that they would have 70 brown-haired, I mean blond-haired, blue-eyed virgins for their unlimited sexual pleasure in this place called Paradise? And the parents of that person then throw a party celebrating the destruction of their child. You want to tell me you understand that kind of mentality? Because I don't believe that. There's no one in the Western world that can comprehend that kind of mind-set, but, ladies and gentlemen, that is the mind-set of the religion of Islam around the world.

"Islam," Frazier says dramatically, "is a satanic religion."

He warns of Muslim "sleeper cells" in America waiting to carry out new terrorist attacks.

"You may have a Muslim doctor, and he may be a wonderful person," he says. "He may love his family, but you know what'll happen? One day, they will come to him -- I'm just using this as an illustration -- they will come to him and they'll say, 'We have a mission for you, and you will either do as you're told,' [or,] and they'll whip out the pictures, 'Here are your three children. We'll send their heads to you in a box.' Now, the difference is, is that if somebody told you that, you'd call the FBI or Homeland Security or somebody like that. They're not going to do that. Do you know why? Because they know the Muslim will do just what they say, and when it comes right down to where the rubber meets the road, boys and girls, they're going to save the lives of their own children before they'll save your own. And you most likely would probably do the same thing yourselves."

He pauses and slowly scans the crowd, which sits silently, expectantly awaiting his next sentence.

"I thank God for our men and women who are fighting over there because if they weren't fighting there, we'd be fighting right here in the streets of America. I'm convinced of that," he says, and the sanctuary erupts in loud applause.

America, the crowd is told, is being ruled by evil, clandestine organizations that hide behind the veneer of liberal, democratic groups. These clandestine forces seek to destroy Christians. They spread their demonic, secular humanist ideology through front groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, the Trilateral Commission and "the major TV networks, high-profile newspapers and newsmagazines," the U.S. State Department, major foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), the United Nations, "the left wing of the Democratic Party" and Harvard, Yale "and 2,000 other colleges and universities." All of these groups have joined forces, LaHaye has warned, to "turn America into an amoral, humanist country, ripe for merger into a one-world socialist state."

The radical Christian right has no religious legitimacy. It is a mass political movement. It is interchangeable, in many ways, with other traditional political movements ranging from fascism to communism to the ethnic nationalist parties in the former Yugoslavia. It shares with these movements an inability to cope with ambiguity, doubt and uncertainty. It also embraces a world of miracles and signs and makes war on rational, reality-based thought. It condemns self-criticism and debate as apostasy. It places a premium on action. It dismisses those who do not bow down before its god -- and the leaders who claim to speak for God -- as heretics and traitors.

This movement shares with corporatists, who are busy cannibalizing our society for profit, the belief that there are a chosen few who know the truth and therefore have the right to impose it. The citizen, the individual, no longer has any legitimacy in this new world. All legitimacy is assumed by groups, whether they are corporate groups herding us over the cliff of globalization or religious groups that give popular vent to corporate-generated despair through faith in the Christian utopia. In this paradigm -- corporate and religious -- we become disempowered, afraid, passive and easily manipulated.

Apocalyptic visions like this one have, throughout history, cowed populations and inspired genocidal killers. They have enticed societies into collective suicide. These visions nourished the butchers who led the Inquisition, the Crusades and the conquistadors who swept through the Americas converting and then exterminating the native population.

These visions sustained the SS guards at Auschwitz, the Stalinists who consigned tens of thousands of Ukrainian families to starvation and death, the torturers in the clandestine prisons in Argentina during the Dirty War and the Serbian thugs with heavy machine guns and wraparound sunglasses who stood over the bodies of those they had slain in the smoking ruins of Bosnian villages.

Those who promise to purify the world through violence, to relieve the anxiety of moral pollution and despair, appeal to our noblest sentiments, our highest virtues, our capacity for self-sacrifice and our utopian visions of a cleansed world. It is this coupling of fantastic hope and profound despair, along with visions of peace and light and absolute terror, of selflessness and murder, which frees the consciences of those who call for and carry out the eradication of those they have banished from moral consideration.

When leaders of this movement, such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, sanction, as they do, pre-emptive nuclear strikes against our enemies, and therefore the enemies of God, they fuel the passions of terrorists in love with the same apocalyptic nightmares. They march us to our own doom cheered by the delusion that once the dogs of war, even nuclear war, are unleashed, hundreds of millions will die, but because Christians have been blessed and chosen by God they alone will arise in triumph from the ash heap.

In this new world, where those who seek to do us harm will soon have in their hands cruder versions of the apocalyptic weapons we possess, dirty bombs or chemical or biological agents, the vision of those among us who welcome catastrophic warfare, indeed seek to hasten it, who fervently await the apocalypse and the end of time, who believe they will be lifted up into the sky by a returning Christ, forces us all to kneel before the god of death. The prayers these "Christians" near Detroit -- and tens of millions across the nation -- utter for deliverance and apocalyptic glory only hasten our flight from reality and ensure our self-annihilation.

Global Warming Report Edited for Graphic Content

Global Warming Report Edited for Graphic Content

Reporting the severity of global warming largely depends on who has the most at stake economically, with those who will be impacted the most having very little say in the matter, while the countries that generate the greatest amount of greenhouse gasses have been actively trying to downplay the threat—and the role of human activity—in regards to climate change.

A new global warming report issued Friday by the United Nations paints a near-apocalyptic vision of Earth's future: hundreds of millions of people short of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction. Even the poorest citizens of industrialized nations will likely bear the brunt of such shortages.

The report is the second of four scheduled to be issued this year by the U.N., which marshaled more than 2,500 scientists to give their best predictions of the consequences of a few degrees increase in temperature. The first report, released in February, said global warming was irreversible but could be moderated by large-scale societal changes. That report said with 90% confidence that global warming was caused by humans. The report also indicated that the world's biggest polluters — the industrialized nations — bore a great deal of responsibility to reverse this trend.

The language in this most recent report was softened because some nations lobbied for last-minute changes to the dire predictions. Negotiations led to deleting some timelines for events, as well as some forecasts on how many people would be affected on each continent as global temperatures rose. An earlier draft of the report specified that water would become increasingly scarce for up to a billion people in Asia by 2100. A table outlining how various levels of carbon dioxide emissions corresponded to increasing temperatures and their effects was also removed.

The actions were seen by critics as an attempt to ease the pressure on industrialized nations to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are gradually warming the planet.

http://musicvideowire.com/dynamic/article_view.asp?AID=12020

Southwest US : the 90 YearDrought

Human-induced change in Earth's atmosphere will leave the American Southwest in perpetual drought for the next 90 years, a new study finds.

Conditions in the southwestern states and portions of northern Mexico will be similar to those seen during a severe multiyear drought in the Southwest during the 1950s, as well as the drought that turned the Great Plains into the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

The southern United States lies in a climatic region called the subtropics, which is dry because "the atmosphere moves water out of those regions," explained study team leader Richard Seager of Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory.

The moist air is transported to temperate regions at higher latitudes.

The study, published in the April 5 issue of the journal Science, found that as greenhouse gases warm the air, it can hold more moisture, so the atmospheric flow moves more water vapor out of subtropical zones and into higher latitudes.

The dry areas then become drier, and the wet become wetter.

This flow, known as the Hadley cell, features rising air over the equator and descending air over the subtropics, which suppresses precipitation.

"And that Hadley cell, in a warming world, expands poleward," Seager said, bringing the U.S. Southwest more under the influence of the descending air.

Similar changes in the atmosphere produced past droughts and conditions such as the Dust Bowl, but the study found that the ultimate cause of historic droughts was natural, unlike this projected drought.

During those droughts, La Niña, El Niño's cool-water counterpart, brought cooler ocean temperatures to the equatorial Pacific, which resulted in drier conditions over North America.

The researchers used climate models to determine the level of drought based on the amount of evaporation at the ground subtracted from the amount of precipitation that falls at the surface.

The balance between these two processes is what maintains rivers and groundwater flow. As less water is available, water resources become jeopardized.

"The lifeline there is the Colorado River," Seager said, and it and other rivers are already stressed by the 10th year of drought in the Southwest.

As populations in the Southwest increase, governments will have to make adjustments to reduce water usage, but Seager and others unsure just what those changes should be.

Southwest US to be hit hard by Global awarming

Global warming could hit Southwest hard

Dust Bowl-scale droughts forecast

By Marc Kaufman, Washington Post | April 6, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Global warming will permanently change the climate of the American Southwest, making it so much hotter and drier that Dust Bowl-scale droughts will become common, a new climate report concludes.

While much of the nation west of the Mississippi River is likely to get drier because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the greatest effect will be felt in the already-arid areas on both sides of the US-Mexico border. By the end of the century, the climate researchers predict, rainfall in that region will have declined by a worrisome 10 percent to 20 percent annually.

A similar drying out of the subtropical belt above and below the equator will hit the Mediterranean region and parts of Africa, South America, and South Asia, the report says, as the overall warming of the oceans and surface air transforms basic wind and precipitation patterns around the earth.

The prediction of a drier Southwest was made by 16 of 19 climate computer models assembled by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the international scientific effort to assess the impact of global warming, which is releasing a new report today. The drought results were analyzed separately in a paper published on line yesterday by the journal Science, which also predicted that regions outside the drying belt will get more rain.

"It's a situation of the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer when it comes to rainfall," said Yochanan Kushnir of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, one of the paper's authors.

He said the authors of the new paper had a very high level of confidence that the droughts will develop and that they will be the result of increases in atmospheric greenhouse gases created through burning fossil fuels and other human activities.

The researchers said future droughts in the affected regions will be different from those in the past, which were caused by local weather conditions and the effects of El Niqo and La Niqa ocean temperature variations. The Southwest has seen significantly below-average rainfall since 1999, and there is some preliminary information to suggest that global warming is already playing a role .

As the planet warms, the researchers said, basic climate dynamics will change. Currently, hot air from the equatorial tropics rises about 8 to 12 miles until it hits the stratosphere and is blocked, then spreads to the north and south and remains aloft until it passes 10 to 30 degrees latitude before cooling and descending again. The computer models show that with more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases making the planet hotter, the area where the hot air remains aloft -- and suppresses rainfall -- will widen. Dry areas will become drier, and arid areas will expand.

The prospect of a drier Southwest is particularly troublesome because the region has some of the nation's fastest growing cities, including Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Richard Seager, also from Lamont-Doherty and a lead author of the paper, said the region will have to rethink how it uses water. Governments "need to plan for this right now, coming up with new, well-informed, and fair deals for allocation of declining water resources," he said.

The climate models generally assumed a gradually increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere until 2050, at which point they assume that the nations of world will have found ways to replace fossil fuels as the main source of energy. Because climate responds steadily but slowly to the buildup, however, the full effect on precipitation changes would not be felt until 2100.

The changes are already in progress and will not be stopped for decades even by dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the researchers said.

The current drought that has affected much of the Southwest since 1999 may already be the result of global warming as much as regional weather patterns, they said. For example, Kushnir said, the drought continued last year even though there was a significant El Niño effect -- which normally produces increased rainfall in the area.

Scientists have debated whether the increased dryness projected is a function of greater evaporation as a result of hotter temperatures or of decreases in rainfall. The broad consensus from the 19 new climate models blames decreased rainfall, Kushnir said

Global Warming: 20- 30% of Species at "high risk" of extinction

By Jeff Mason

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Climate experts were trying to agree on Friday on the bleakest U.N. warning yet about the impacts of global warming, foreseeing hunger and water shortages in Africa and Asia, extinctions of species and rising oceans.

Delegates from more than 100 nations in the U.N. climate panel were locked in overnight talks in Brussels, seeking to overcome differences about a 21-page summary for policymakers to allow planned publication at 0800 GMT.

The talks, which began on Monday, are to review and approve a report warning that climate change could lead to lower crop yields in Africa, a thaw of Himalayan glaciers and a rise in ocean levels that could last for centuries.

It will say climate change, blamed mainly on human emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, is no longer a vague, distant threat for the planet.

"The whole of climate change is something actually here and now rather than something for the future," Neil Adger, a British lead author of the report, said in a break from the late-night talks.

He said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would make "a much stronger statement" about the regional impacts of climate change than in its previous report in 2001.

U.N. officials, who had hoped for the talks to be completed on Thursday, predicted that they might end around 2 a.m. (0000 GMT) on Friday.

EXTINCTIONS

Negotiators slightly watered down threats of extinctions.

"Approximately 20-30 percent of plant and animal species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk of extinction if increases in global average temperature exceed 1.5-2.5 degrees Celsius (2.7-4.5 Fahrenheit)," an agreed text said.

The draft had said that 20-30 percent of all species would be at "high risk" of extinction with those temperature rises.

"There are very, very many (outstanding issues), and many of them are small," said Wolfgang Cramer, a delegate from Germany.

The report, which is approved by governments as well as scientists, will set the tone for policy making in coming years, including the effort to extend the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.

Kyoto binds 35 rich nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions but has been undercut by a 2001 pullout by the United States, the top emitter. President George W. Bush says Kyoto would cost U.S. jobs and wrongly excludes developing nations such as China.

Friday's report will be the second by the IPCC this year -- in February, the first said it was more than 90 percent probable that mankind was to blame for most global warming since 1950.

Friday's report makes clear that developing nations are likely to suffer most even though they have done little to burn fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution.

Temperate countries nearer the poles, such as Canada, Russia or Nordic nations, may benefit for a while from factors including higher crop growth.

For Africa "reductions in the area suitable for agriculture, and in length of growing seasons and yield potential, are likely to lead to increased risk of hunger," the draft says.

And rising seas could threaten low-lying Pacific islands and large tracts of countries such as Bangladesh.

There is a theoretical chance that the IPCC could break up without agreement, something that has happened only once, in Geneva in 1995. The IPCC reconvened a few weeks later in Montreal and successfully signed off on the report

Good Friday Attack on Iran?

Operation Bite - April 6 Sneak Attack
By US Forces On Iran Planned
- Russian Military Sources Warn General Ivashov Calls For Emergency Session Of
UN Security Council To Ward Off Looming US Aggression
By Webster G. Tarpley
3-25-7

WASHINGTON DC -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran's nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

"We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: " Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it," he continued.

Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. "This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran," Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, who would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.

Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. "This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East," he commented.

"Moscow must expert Russia's influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter," said General Ivashov. "In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force," he concluded.

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070319/62260006.html

http://fr.rian.ru/world/20070321/62387717.html

Heat lowered in Iran standoff but tensions high

Heat lowered in Iran standoff TheStar.com - News - Heat lowered in Iran standoff

Canadian hero in 1979 hostage crisis praises efforts of the U.K. to win release of British captives but warns tensions still high

April 03, 2007

Olivia Ward
STAFF REPORTER

As Britain and Iran narrowed their differences over 15 British naval personnel seized in the Persian Gulf, the Canadian hero of the 1979 Tehran hostage crisis praised London's efforts to end the standoff, but warned the situation is still volatile.

"Britain has handled the situation very well," former Iran ambassador Ken Taylor said in a phone interview from New York. "They have done just the right thing, anticipating some Iranian statements and criticizing others in an appropriate way without increasing tensions."

But Taylor, who helped six American diplomats escape Tehran during a U.S. embassy hostage-taking, added, "this playing field is mined with dynamite. The incident itself may not be comparable with what happened back then, but tensions are at a very high level to start with."

The heat lowered a notch yesterday as Tehran's top negotiator, Ali Larijani, announced that "there is no need for any trial" of the 15 British sailors and marines who were captured.

Iran's state radio network, meanwhile, said it would no longer air video "confessions" of the captives, reflecting "positive changes" in Britain's negotiating stance, including hints that the London government was willing to find ways of avoiding confusion over national boundaries in the Persian Gulf.

The conciliatory moves averted what might have been Britain's worst diplomatic nightmare, with the captives paraded in court and threatened with draconian punishment.

In that worst-case scenario, analysts say, the U.S. might enter the struggle, leading to an escalating military confrontation and an oil price spike. If sanctions were dramatically widened against banks doing business with Iran, an international currency shock could follow.

"This issue can be resolved and there is no need for any trial," Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told Britain's Channel 4 News television yesterday. But he added "there should be a delegation to review the case" and decide whose territorial waters the service people were sailing in when they were taken by Iran 12 days ago.

Britain insists they were on a routine monitoring mission in Iraqi waters under a United Nations mandate, but Iran charges they were trespassing in their territory.

"We must understand how significant claims to the waterways are in this region," said Saeed Rahnema, head of the School of Public Policy and Administration at York University. "The Iran-Iraq war was fought over the Shatt al Arab," a waterway flanking the two countries, he recalled. The combined death toll was more than 1 million.

And, Taylor said, "we shouldn't forget that Iraq's civil war is raging within 15 minutes of where those (Britons) were apprehended." The standoff over Iran's uranium enrichment program also became more dangerous after UN sanctions were tightened last month.

But Taylor said, Iran has shown it does not want to increase tensions over the seizure of the sailors and marines. "(They) made it clear they don't want a scenario like the one three decades ago, with students running amok at the British embassy. At the American embassy there were no police, no security and no soldiers. Yesterday riot police were protecting the British embassy, there was law and order and a government in charge."

Stones and fireworks were thrown at the British embassy in Tehran on Sunday as more than 200 students marched demanding the prisoners be put on trial for espionage. In language reminiscent of the U.S. embassy hostage-taking they also demanded the expulsion of the ambassador and closure of the "den of spies."

Larijani yesterday called on all parties in the naval standoff to stop using "the language of force," while Britain's Foreign Office said it shared with Iran a "desire to make early progress" in ending the dispute.

The incident is far less dramatic than the U.S. faceoff – the most serious in decades of mutual suspicion and hostility. But it is only one of a number of crises in which Iran and the West have locked horns.

As far back as 1946, the Soviet Union helped to launch the Cold War by refusing to withdraw from Iran after World War II.

In 1953, a U.S.-backed coup overthrew nationalist prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh after he nationalized the British-owned oil industry, leaving a legacy of Iranian bitterness against the West.

In 1979, relations soured further when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power and declared an Islamic Republic, allowing Islamic students to storm the U.S. embassy and take 52 Americans hostage, in a standoff that lasted 444 days.

The action set a hostile tone that continued in the 1980s, when a U.S. Navy ship shot down an Iranian airliner, killing 290 passengers, and Khomeini declared a fatwa on British author Salman Rushdie, accusing him of blasphemy for his book The Satanic Verses.

In the 1990s, the U.S. slapped oil and trade sanctions on Iran, accusing it of sponsoring terrorism and committing appalling human rights violations – a situation that was compounded after Iran admitted in 2003 it was producing plutonium, which it said was for peaceful purposes.

Tehran captured eight British servicemen a year later in the same waters where the current group were seized, but released them three days later. Canada's relations with Iran also worsened in 2003 when Montreal photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died of massive injuries in an Iranian prison.