Second Chance to Save Climate

The "" within this article were first published in the New Scientist journal on 22nd May 2013 under the same heading. I was shocked at the ludicrous idea that humans had a shot in the first place, never mind a second shot. While this is a parody, the data are real, the opinions subjective.

HUMANITY has another shot at stopping dangerous climate change. A fresh look at temperature data from the last decade offers an unexpected opportunity to stay below the agreed international target of 2 °C of global warming.

 Thank goodness for that. I can continue to drive my Chelsea tractor for another 10 years without feeling too guilty.

The study took data on the rise in temperatures over the most recent decades, and worked out what this means for the coming decades. It turns out Earth will warm more slowly over this century than we thought it would, buying us a little more time to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Ah, the scientists got it wrong again. Its probably not happening at all.

Climate scientists caution that this in no way means climate change is not real. Temperatures are rising faster than they have for 11,000 years. "It should not take the pressure off at all," says Brian Hoskins of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

 Oh, isn't that a bit defeatest when the data says is not too bad? I thought we were still coming out of the last ice age. Anyone better weather round here wouldn't go amiss.

"Global emissions have to peak and start to come down." But if we act soon the worst effects of climate change could yet be avoided – something many climate scientists had all but given up hope on.

What goes up must come down....tum tee tum

Governments have pledged to limit the world to 2 °C of warming – the agreed threshold for dangerous climate change. With emissions shooting up, this target seemed hopelessly unrealistic. "If previous estimates [of how the climate will warm] were true, keeping the world below 2 °C would have been almost impossible, however big our emission cuts," says Piers Forster of the University of Leeds in the UK, who contributed to the new study. "Now it looks like we have a chance, so we should take it."

 2 deg C is colder than my fridge! I'm not sure this guys got the right idea.

"Prior to this, a lot of us were feeling quite gloomy that whatever we did, we would go over 2 °C," says Forster's colleague Myles Allen of the University of Oxford. "It's not a foregone conclusion any more."

That's nice we need happy people. There's no sense have pessimists in charge. Now they've done their workings again and seem happier can I nip to the corner shop in the car?

After heating rapidly in the late 20th century, Earth warmed slowly in the last decade, partly as a result of natural cycles in the climate system.

I'm a bit confused. Does that include my bicycle? Coz I didn't think I'd been using it all that much, especially with the dreadful weather we've been having?

Alexander Otto, also of the University of Oxford, and colleagues took data on human greenhouse gas emissions since the Industrial Revolution and temperature rises in the last 40 years – including the most recent data. From this, they calculated how much greenhouse gases have warmed the Earth so far.

They then looked at what that meant for the temperature rise over the coming few decades, and found that it will be slower than expected. The team focused on how much hotter the planet will be in the year that carbon dioxide concentrations reach double their pre-industrial value. On current trends, that will happen between 2050 and 2070. Previous studies had found that temperatures would rise by 1.6 °C, but Otto found an increase of 1.3 °C (Nature Geoscience, doi.org/mj7).

"It might buy us five or 10 years," says Chris Forest of Penn State University, although he cautions that the problem hasn't gone away.

Not everyone is convinced that Otto's results change the picture. "Short-term trends are just not that useful," says Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. Susan Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology adds that recent volcanic eruptions temporarily cooled the climate, masking some of the warming. But others say that Otto's calculations take account of these problems, so are probably about right. "The authors have done a very careful job," says Hoskins.

So it looks as if temperatures will rise slightly more slowly than expected in the short term. But does it change where the climate ends up the long run? That depends on how sensitive the climate is to CO₂ accumulating in the atmosphere.

I think this captures the idea. We are on a level or little downward trend at the moment but overall it seems to be racing upwards.

The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that a doubling of CO₂ in the atmosphere would mean temperatures eventually stabilise between 2 °C and 4.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures, with a best estimate of about 3 °C. This long-term stabilisation is known as climate sensitivity.

A growing number of climate scientists thinks that the climate is less sensitive to CO₂ than the IPCC's best estimate, so temperatures will not rise as much as feared, even in the long run. "I've been arguing this for a few years," says James Annan of the JAMSTEC Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences in Japan.

When Otto calculated the climate sensitivity from his data, he found that it was about 2 °C – well below the IPCC's best estimate of 3 °C.

"The observations are telling us one thing and the climate models are telling us another," says Forest. He thinks the most likely range is between 2.5 and 3 °C, slightly below the IPCC's estimate.

If the new figures are right, it's a rare piece of good news for international climate talks. For the last few years, governments have been planning to sign a deal in 2015 that will come into force in 2020. That seemed far too late. Based on previous estimates of the climate sensitivity, global emissions needed to peak by 2020 and then fall to have a 50 per cent chance of avoiding 2 °C.

"If we are lucky and the climate sensitivity is at the low end, and we have a strong agreement in 2015, I think we stand a chance to limit climate change to 2 °C," says Corinne Le Quéré of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. "But there are a lot of ifs."

I think this one looks better. A bit like the waves at the seaside, the temperature and CO2 go up and down over time periods. We are coming out of an ice age and the earth is warming up, so phrases such as "warming faster than it has in the last 15,000 years" pale into insignificance when we look at how fast it warmed 130,000 years ago. Looking at this graph we could be about to come down, or we could go up for quite a bit longer. Ah that's what the argument is about! How much can we control things round here. Well since we turned our heads to technology we seem to think we control everything round here...... That is all.... except solar flares.... and volcanoes....and earthquakes...and tsunamis....and nuclear reactor meltdown.....and meteors. No strike that last one I remember Bruce Willis is geared up to defeat meteors.

We can improve our chances by cutting emissions of short-lived warming agents like soot, says Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, UK. Otto's research suggests that they have a bigger effect than previously thought, so getting rid of them will buy even more time.

Shoot.. Can I finish that last bag of house coal? My local woodsman couldn't get out to cut down a dead elm for firewood because the fields were too boggy. All that rain see! That reminds me...what's the carbon footprint for kiln dried firewood? Is that as fuel efficient as my 3 litre 4x4?

Regardless, emissions must still peak very soon to give us even a 50:50 chance of staying below 2 °C, says Jason Lowe of the Met Office in Reading, UK. "It was looking like the best we could attain was a 40:60 chance," says Hoskins. "If the negotiations are done seriously, 2 °C is still on."

Now I'm getting really confused, does that mean I should cycle or drive to the corner shop? Why must things peak soon? Maybe they already peaked? I don't see that much heavy industry round here anymore.All the chimneys are monuments to a bygone era. In fact everyone is out of work because the bankers ran off with the money. Where are all the emissions coming from? Maybe it's the fallout from aviation fuel as all the bankers go on holiday or scientists and politicians commute to their climate meetings.  

Axis wobbles and wandering poles

Some of the consequences of climate change are just plain strange. Days should get a teensy bit shorter as the Earth spins faster, for instance. And now we have evidence that melting ice is tilting the planet.

 Earth's rotational axis wobbles because the planet is not a perfect immutable sphere. Erosion, plate tectonics and the weather move mass around the surface, causing the poles to wander. From 1982 to 2005, this drift averaged about 6 centimetres per year, pulling the North Pole south towards Labrador. That motion is largely attributed to the long-term effects of plate tectonics and the fact that areas covered in ice during the last ice age are popping up like corks.

Corks that pop up very slowly indeed. A more appropriate analogy would be... "as fast as the Himalayas were thrown up". Here's another graph. I think this is what they are arguing about.

Caption above is not mine. Rather a short termist viewpoint I must say. However this shows recent years trends. So the whole of this article is debating whether the next bit of the graph is going to keep going up or keep going down.

In 2005, the drift abruptly shifted in an easterly direction and accelerated. This happened about the same time as melting sped up in Greenland and Antarctica, so Jianli Chen of the University of Texas in Austin, began looking for a link. He used data from the pair of Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites to measure how much mass glaciers were losing. He then calculated how the poles would be affected by redistribution of that mass – around 600 gigatonnes a year from Greenland, Antarctica and mountain glaciers.

He and his team found that shifting that amount of water from glaciers to the sea can account for 90 per cent of the average polar drift since 2005, and that climate change was largely responsible for the sudden change in our planet's tilt (Geophysical Research Letters, doi.org/mj8). Jeff Hecht

A view to a cut

Even if the world is warming more slowly, urgent action is more pressing than ever
"The worst case scenarios are looking less likely. We still have to reduce emissions drastically. If we don't, we are talking about crossing 2 °C for sure"
Myles Allen, University of Oxford
"I think this is overdue. I've been arguing it for a few years, and some powerful people have been very resistant ... The most noteworthy thing about this is not what is being said, but who is saying it"
James Annan, JAMSTEC Yokohama Institute for Earth Sciences, Japan
"If anything it's given me greater resolve. If [previous estimates] were true, keeping the world below 2 °C would have been almost impossible, however big our emission cuts. Now it looks like we have a chance"
Piers Forster, University of Leeds, UK
"It's still collectively possible to stay within the 2 °C boundary, and we should try to do so. It's giving some hope that we can lower the risk of long-term threats to big ice sheets"
Tim Lenton, University of Exeter, UK
"If it does mean a little breathing space, great. It should not take the pressure off at all. The major thing is that global emissions have to peak and start to come down"
Brian Hoskins, Grantham Institute for Climate Change, London

So this sense of urgency. I don't get how it relates to me. I've been through several smart phones in 5 years coz I keep getting upgraded. I need to stay at the forefront of technology otherwise I can't keep up with what's going on. Now I can browse photos without even touching my phone, whilst driving (to the corner shop) to get an upgrade on my ipad for playing games on, coz that's much better than my laptop, which is conveniently portable but doesn't have a touchscreen. That said I really need to upgrade my desktop coz the fan is getting noisy. But at least I can keep up with climate change documentaries now I've got a hard drive recorder. Its a bit inconvenient I have to leave it on all the time otherwise I find all my programs are only half recorded. How will I ever get the conclusion on what is happening with climate change

Lastly. I quite like this graph, since it shows not only is global CO2 coming down but temperatures seem to be at rock bottom.

Don't be fulled however. It really does matter what scale you look at things. By the way I'm heading out to the corner shop. Its raining so I'll take the 4x4 to make sure I can get back again through the mudslides....Can I pick up anything for anyone...some more consumer electronics for example.

   

"QUEEN OF THE SUN: What Are the Bees Telling Us? is a profound, alternative look at the global bee crisis from the award-winning director of THE REAL DIRT ON FARMER JOHN.

Taking us on a journey through the catastrophic disappearance of bees and the mysterious world of the beehive, this alarming and ultimately uplifting film weaves together a dramatic story of the heart-felt struggles of beekeepers, scientists and philosophers around the world. This spellbinding film explores the long-term causes that have led to one of our most urgent global food crises, illuminating the deep link between humans and bees.

The story unveils 10,000 years of beekeeping, highlighting how that historic and sacred relationship has been lost. Inspiring and entertaining, QUEEN OF THE SUN uncovers the problems and solutions in renewing a culture in balance with nature." -


Go to the documentary's website, to learn more!

Epidemic Kills 24,000 in Central America

Jesus Ignacio Flores started working when he was 16, laboring long hours on construction sites and in the fields of his country’s biggest sugar plantation. Three years ago his kidneys started to fail and flooded his body with toxins. He became too weak to work, wracked by cramps, headaches and vomiting. On Jan. 19 he died on the porch of his house. He was 51. His withered body was dressed by his weeping wife, embraced a final time, then carried in the bed of a pickup truck to a grave on the edge of Chichigalpa, a town in Nicaragua’s sugar-growing heartland, where studies have found more than one in four men showing symptoms of chronic kidney disease. A mysterious epidemic is devastating the Pacific coast of Central America, killing more than 24,000 people in El Salvador and Nicaragua since 2000 and striking thousands of others with chronic kidney disease at rates unseen virtually anywhere else. Scientists say they have received reports of the phenomenon as far north as southern Mexico and as far south as Panama.

Last year it reached the point where El Salvador’s health minister, Dr. Maria Isabel Rodriguez, appealed for international help, saying the epidemic was undermining health systems. Wilfredo Ordonez, who has harvested corn, sesame and rice for more than 30 years in the Bajo Lempa region of El Salvador, was hit by the chronic disease when he was 38. Ten years later, he depends on dialysis treatments he administers to himself four times a day. “This is a disease that comes with no warning, and when they find it, it’s too late,” Ordonez said as he lay on a hammock on his porch. Many of the victims were manual laborers or worked in sugar cane fields that cover much of the coastal lowlands. Patients, local doctors and activists say they believe the culprit lurks among the agricultural chemicals workers have used for years with virtually none of the protections required in more developed countries. But a growing body of evidence supports a more complicated and counterintuitive hypothesis. The roots of the epidemic, scientists say, appear to lie in the grueling nature of the work performed by its victims, including construction workers, miners and others who labor hour after hour without enough water in blazing temperatures, pushing their bodies through repeated bouts of extreme dehydration and heat stress for years on end. Many start as young as 10. The punishing routine appears to be a key part of some previously unknown trigger of chronic kidney disease, which is normally caused by diabetes and high-blood pressure, maladies absent in most of the patients in Central America.

“The thing that evidence most strongly points to is this idea of manual labor and not enough hydration,” said Daniel Brooks, a professor of epidemiology at Boston University’s School of Public Health, who has worked on a series of studies of the kidney disease epidemic. Because hard work and intense heat alone are hardly a phenomenon unique to Central America, some researchers will not rule out manmade factors. But no strong evidence has turned up. “I think that everything points away from pesticides,” said Dr. Catharina Wesseling, an occupational and environmental epidemiologist who also is regional director of the Program on Work, Health and Environment in Central America. “It is too multinational; it is too spread out. “I would place my bet on repeated dehydration, acute attacks everyday. That is my bet, my guess, but nothing is proved.” Dr. Richard J. Johnson, a kidney specialist at the University of Colorado, Denver, is working with other researchers investigating the cause of the disease. They too suspect chronic dehydration.
“This is a new concept, but there’s some evidence supporting it,” Johnson said. “There are other ways to damage the kidney. Heavy metals, chemicals, toxins have all been considered, but to date there have been no leading candidates to explain what’s going on in Nicaragua … “As these possibilities get exhausted, recurrent dehydration is moving up on the list.” In Nicaragua, the number of annual deaths from chronic kidney disease more than doubled in a decade, from 466 in 2000 to 1,047 in 2010, according to the Pan American Health Organization, a regional arm of the World Health Organization. In El Salvador, the agency reported a similar jump, from 1,282 in 2000 to 2,181 in 2010. Farther down the coast, in the cane-growing lowlands of northern Costa Rica, there also have been sharp increases in kidney disease, Wesseling said, and the Pan American body’s statistics show deaths are on the rise in Panama, although at less dramatic rates.
While some of the rising numbers may be due to better record-keeping, scientists have no doubt they are facing something deadly and previously unknown to medicine. In nations with more developed health systems, the disease that impairs the kidney’s ability to cleanse the blood is diagnosed relatively early and treated with dialysis in medical clinics. In Central America, many of the victims treat themselves at home with a cheaper but less efficient form of dialysis, or go without any dialysis at all. At a hospital in the Nicaraguan town of Chinandega, Segundo Zapata Palacios sat motionless in his room, bent over with his head on the bed. “He no longer wants to talk,” said his wife, Enma Vanegas. His levels of creatinine, a chemical marker of kidney failure, were 25 times the normal amount.

In the Sugar Cane

His family told him he was being hospitalized to receive dialysis. In reality, the hope was to ease his pain before his inevitable death, said Carmen Rios, a leader of Nicaragua’s Association of Chronic Kidney Disease Patients, a support and advocacy group. “There’s already nothing to do,” she said. “He was hospitalized on Jan. 23 just waiting to die.” Zapata Palacios passed away on Jan. 26. He was 49. Working with scientists from Costa Rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Wesseling tested groups on the coast and compared them with groups who had similar work habits and exposure to pesticide but lived and worked more than 500 meters (1,500 feet) above sea level. Some 30 percent of coastal dwellers had elevated levels of creatinine, strongly suggesting environment rather than agrochemicals was to blame, Brooks, the epidemiologist, said. The study is expected to be published in a peer-reviewed journal in coming weeks. Brooks and Johnson, the kidney specialist, said they have seen echoes of the Central American phenomenon in reports from hot farming areas in Sri Lanka, Egypt and the Indian east coast.

“We don’t really know how widespread this is,” Brooks said. “This may be an under-recognized epidemic.” Jason Glaser, co-founder of a group working to help victims of the epidemic in Nicaragua, said he and colleagues also have begun receiving reports of mysterious kidney disease among sugar cane workers in Australia. Despite the growing consensus among international experts, Elsy Brizuela, a doctor who works with an El Salvadoran project to treat workers and research the epidemic, discounts the dehydration theory and insists “the common factor is exposure to herbicides and poisons.” Nicaragua’s highest rates of chronic kidney disease show up around the Ingenio San Antonio, a plant owned by the Pellas Group conglomerate, whose sugar mill processes nearly half the nation’s sugar. Flores and Zapata Palacios both worked at the plantation. According to one of Brooks’ studies, about eight years ago the factory started providing electrolyte solution and protein cookies to workers who previously brought their own water to work. But the study also found that some workers were cutting sugar cane for as long as 9 1/2 hours a day with virtually no break and little shade in average temperatures of 30 C (87 F).

Worker taking supplied electrolyte drink

In 2006, the plantation, owned by one of the country’s richest families, received $36.5 million in loans from the International Finance Corp., the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group, to buy more land, expand its processing plant and produce more sugar for consumers and ethanol production. In a statement, the IFC said it had examined the social and environmental impacts of its loans as part of a due diligence process and did not identify kidney disease as something related to the sugar plantation’s operations. Nonetheless, the statement said, “we are concerned about this disease that affects not only Nicaragua but other countries in the region, and will follow closely any new findings.” Ariel Granera, a spokesman for the Pellas’ business conglomerate, said that starting as early as 1993 the company had begun taking a wide variety of precautions to avoid heat stress in its workers, from starting their shifts very early in the morning to providing them with many gallons of drinking water per day. Associated Press reporters saw workers bringing water bottles from their homes, which they refilled during the day from large cylinders of water in the buses that bring them to the fields.

Glaser, the co-founder of the activist group in Nicaragua, La Isla Foundation, said that nonetheless many worker protections in the region are badly enforced by the companies and government regulators, particularly measures to stop workers with failing kidneys from working in the cane fields owned by the Pellas Group and other companies. Many workers disqualified by tests showing high levels of creatinine go back to work in the fields for subcontractors with less stringent standards, he said. Some use false IDs, or give their IDs to their healthy sons, who then pass the tests and go work in the cane fields, damaging their kidneys. “This is the only job in town,” Glaser said. “It’s all they’re trained to do. It’s all they know.” The Ingenio San Antonio mill processes cane from more than 24,000 hectares (60,000 acres) of fields, about half directly owned by the mill and most of the rest by independent farmers. The trade group for Nicaragua’s sugar companies said the Boston University study had confirmed that “the agricultural sugar industry in Nicaragua has no responsibility whatsoever for chronic renal insufficiency in Nicaragua” because the research found that “in the current body of scientific knowledge there is no way to establish a direct link between sugar cane cultivation and renal insufficiency.”

Hard at work keeping the developed world supplied with its sugar fix

Brooks, the epidemiologist at Boston University, told the AP that the study simply said there was no definitive scientific proof of the cause, but that all possible connections remained open to future research. In comparison with Nicaragua, where thousands of kidney disease sufferers work for large sugar estates, in El Salvador many of them are independent small farmers. They blame agricultural chemicals and few appear to have significantly changed their work habits in response to the latest research, which has not received significant publicity in El Salvador. In Nicaragua, the dangers are better known, but still, workers need jobs. Zapata Palacios left eight children. Three of them work in the cane fields. Two already show signs of disease.

20th Century Marketing Guide to Children

Commercialisation of Children

U.S. Companies Green Business Ranking

Newsweek’s Green Rankings published this week, cut through the glossy brochure front end of big business propoganda. Partnering with two leading research organizations Newsweek have created a comprehensive ranking based on environmental management, environmental impact and disclosure. Click here for the full methodology.

By comparing the actual environmental footprints, management (policies, programs, initiatives, controversies), and reporting practices of big companies Newsweek allow you to see for yourself which companies have the best or worst environmental credentials.

The 25 companies hitting the bottom of the list contain a mix of industry sectors. Here they are plotted against the other companies listed in the same sector but with better performance. Clearly all sectors could improve their performance relative to their peers, though especially those in financials ,energy and materials sectors.

Here are the 25 worst performing companies:

Terminator, Robocop.....Alphadog

Soon, instead of soldiers in the war are going to fight robots. AlphaDog robot created by Boston Dynamics will go into service in the U.S. in 2012.
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Latest Tablets

Close Eyes to Exit

Orangutans Hooked on Cigarettes

Shocking: Because of the Public Visiting the Zoo, Indonesian Orangutans are now Hooked on Cigarettes! What Kind of World Are we Living in???
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Fast Food vs Reality

I love that someone has actually gone to the effort to show the reality of this grandest of world illusions.

This would be hilarious if it weren't so depressing. How does it make you feel when you see the picture of the real food instead of the airbrushed fake?

Fast Food: Ads vs. Reality
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Earthlings

Earthlings - trailer
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Agent Orange Still Claims Lives But U.S. Starts to Clean Up

Over eight years in the 1960's during the war in Vietnam the US government carried out operation Ranch Hand in which they sprayed 42,000,000 litres of a chemical defoliant called Agent Orange, which contained dioxins - some of the most toxic compounds known to mankind. The US used this chemical concotion to kill all the vegetation including rice. The rather unsubtle idea being to deprive the enemy of two of the basics pre-requisites to life - shelter and food.

‪Agent Orange - Vietnam‬‏
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Through importation and storage of large quantities of these chemicals the US government caused not only widespread contamination of the environment through spraying, but also left contamination hotspots such as in Biên Hòa City, where chemicals stored at an airbase leaked into the soil and groundwater. Dioxins are recalcitrant chemicals whch once created, persist in the environment for many years. In the west incinerators, power stations and other industrial processes that involve combustion are closely regulated to limit the release of even minute quantities of dioxins into the atmosphere. In the UK enquiries have been held into the release of dioxins from incinerators which have purportedly led to health impacts in clusters around the sites. The burden of proving dioxins caused these health impacts has been great due to the low levels released and the need for accuracy in sampling and analysis. However in Vietnam the US government allowed the release of such massive concentrations that health impact clusters are grossly obvious.


The legacy of US involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam range from cancers to multiple miscarriages to developmental defects, resulting in physical and mental deformities. In the late 1990's a survey of blood samples taken from people living in communities exposed to dioxin found that 95% had dioxin levels 135 times greater than people living outwith these areas. This means Agent Orange dioxins will continue to affect generations to come.

As a consequence of the US government actions in Vietnam huge areas of the country's soil and water remain polluted. The Vietnamese say the US government breached the 1925 Geneva Convention, which prohibits the use of any chemical weapon to kill plants during time of war. Despite approaches to successive American Presidents no compensation has been elicited, therefore the victims have had to resort to legal action against the US Government and the chemical companies involved. In 1984/85 the Dow and Monsanto chemical companies paid out around $236,000,000 in settlement to soldiers whose health had been affected by working wth Agent Orange during the war. The companies never however admitted liability and still claim they were instructed to produce the chemicals by the US government.

In June 2011 a project commenced between the Vietnam and US governments to start cleaning up some of the pollution. Alas nothing has yet been agreed to help the ongoing vitims.

‪Clean-Up Of Agent Orange Used In Vietnam War May Finally Begin‬‏ - YouTube
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Darkside Quotes - Tony Blair

Tony Blair, former UK prime minister

Tony Blair the last Labour Prime Minister of the UK took the country to war under false pretences. His government produced a dossier that supposedly said Saddam Hussein held Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) that could be deployed in 45 minutes. The conclusion was he had to be stopped. The UK has ever since been subject of retaliation attacks by Jihadists. 

Blair also saw his electorate make the greatest anti-war protests the UK has seen. He has faced enquiries into why he took the country to war without, as it turns out, any evidence of the presence of WMD's in Iraq. He was called in for questioning twice by police to answer questions about his government taking money for honours i.e. getting a seat in the House of Lords. 

Here are a few select quotes from his three terms in office, which show the range of his media manipulation to suit his purpose.  

"I can't stand politicians who wear God on their sleeves."
7 April, Daily Telegraph. On having been elected prime Minister, 1995

"I think if you have faith about these things, you realise that judgement is made by other people - and if you believe in God, it's made by God as well."
4 March, when asked by Michael Parkinson on ITV1 what role his Christian faith had in his decision-making over the Iraq war, 2006. Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office.

"We are not the master now. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people. We will never forget that."
7 May, addressing Labour MPs at Church House 1997

"I know that this course of action has produced deep divisions of opinion in our country."
21 March, broadcast to the nation after the start of the war, 2003

"I think most people who have dealt with me, think I'm a pretty straight sort of guy and I am."
16, November, BBC's On The Record, during the controversy over a donation to the Labour Party by Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, 1997

"On the family, we need two or three eye-catching initiatives that are entirely conventional in terms of their attitude to the family... We need more. I should be personally associated with as much of this as possible."
17 July, leaked Blair memo, 1998 

"A day like today is not a day for soundbites, really. But I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. I really do."
8 April, on arriving in Belfast for the talks which produced the Good Friday Agreement, 1998. A process for which the foundations had been laid by Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam and who Blair promptly sidelined, taking all the glory from the historic agreement which helped to consolidate peace in Northern Ireland. 

Drugs That Saved Lives !

Merck President Raymond Gilmartin announces Vioxx withdrawal.

Vioxx: Once a popular treatment for arthritis and hailed for its ability to decrease pain and increase mobility, Vioxx saw its fortunes decline precipitously. More than five years after it was approved by the US FDA, manufacturer Merck withdrew the drug from the market when it emerged that long-term patients had an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

merck minimized the true risks of vioxx
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Ongoing investigation shows a series of cover-ups by Merck who had recorded increased mortality risks during trials with the drug. Authorities question whether drug companies can safely evaluate their own information. A particularly difficult thing to do it seems when multi-million £/$'s are put into research only to find during late stage human trials that health risks mean the drug it is unsafe to market. Or as with Vioxx it seems the risks were covered up, so it was marketed.

WE'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU - coming soon to DOCNZ 2007
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Who is really looking after your health. Merck representatives publicly state their family members were taking Vioxx immediately up to its withdrawal. The problem here is it's not the same people who cover up the data that are marketing of the drug. So these people even believe their own hype.

VIOXX Class Action Lawyers‬‏
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Someone somewhere up the hierarchy makes the decisions to operate unethically. Merck is a classic example of a corporation that acts like a psychotic. This Australian man won his lawsuit even when Merck's lawyers massively outnumbered his legal team. US victims of Vioxx received a reported $6bn settlement.

Vioxx victim wins lawsuit in Australia‬‏
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The New Nuclear Dawn

Get your mutations here. 5 for a pound

Rather scarily a number of food plants in common use today originated from well meaning, but in hindsight downright foolish experiments. New Scientist reported this week Fortunately society has moved on and attempts to genetically mutate our foodstock by not so well meaning trans-national corporations are being hindered by the environmentalists among us. However in the 1950's post Hiroshima and pre Silent Spring it seems any curious individual could get their hands on some radioactive material. and.... Gosh look at the size of my cabbages!!...we could solve world poverty...put an end to famine. Some of these foods appear to have survived, though with the 1957 fire at Cumbria's, Windscale Plutonium enrichment plant the UK Atomic Energy Authority, started to take radiation more seriously. Thank goodness too.

Discharged plutonium readily builds up in filter feeders like mussels

Early in the 1950s, UKAEA carried out experiments deliberately discharging large amounts of radioactivity into the Irish Sea to study the effect of all the different radioactive substances on the environment. Dr. John Dunster physicist in charge said in 1958, at the 2nd UN conference on "peaceful" uses of nuclear energy: "The intention has been to discharge fairly substantial amounts of radioactivity … the aims of this experiment would have been defeated if the level of radioactivity discharged had been kept to a minimum." The largest concentrations of radioactivity may be found along the coastline off the Sellafield site itself where higher concentrations of plutonium have been detected than those meassured around Chernobyl. Following deliberate and accidental releases of radiation due to incompetence, including a fire in 1957 (the seriousness of which was covered up for 30 years), the Irish Sea is today the world's most radioactive polluted sea. Sellafield is also one of the most major contributors of radioactive contamination to the Arctic marine area. Contamination from the plant can be traced in the environment all the way from the Irish Sea to the Barents Sea.

Fore more detailed information check out the Bellona Foundation, an international environmental NGO based in Norway. Founded in 1986 as a direct action protest group, Bellona has become a recognised technology and solution-oriented organization with offices in Oslo, Brussels, Washington D.C., St. Petersburg and Murmansk. Altogether, some 75 engineers, ecologists, nuclear physicists, economists, lawyers, political scientists and journalists work at Bellona.

Noam Chomsky - Duplicity of the West on Dictators and Democracy

Support your favourite dictator until it no longer suits you, then exhort some suitable rhetoric until it becomes aparrent who you need to influence next.

BBC News - Newsnight - Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Paxman's interview in full
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BBC News - Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head denied sex charges bail

The darkside strikes again. This time the IMF head is caught for sexually assaulting a hotel maid.

Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head denied sex charges bail
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BBC News - Strauss-Kahn arrest: IMF head denied sex charges bail

Ocean Flux of CO2 debate

Last years (2010) World Development Report by the World Bank reported that oceans will become more acidic over the coming decades and centuries as a direct chemical consequence of the increasing atmospheric concentration of CO2. Most of which is considered to be produced by human activities. Oceanic water acts as a natural sponge, absorbing a large proportion of CO2, creating relatively dense CO2 rich waters that sink to the ocean bottom.

It has been proposed that absorption of approximately one-third of man-made emissions of CO2 over the past 200 years has decreased the pH of surface seawater by 0.1 units (which given that pH is measured on a logarithmic scale, is quite a lot). One of the most important implications of the changing acidity of the oceans is the problem that it may cause for the many of the marine photosynthetic organisms and animals, such as corals, bivalves, and some plankton that are very sensitive to acid because their shells and plates are made out of calcium carbonate, which cannot be formed in too acidic conditions.

Sea Butterfly
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If plankton, which form the base of the marine food chain and are a major food source for fish and marine mammals are unable to acclimatise or evolve in response to rapid changes in ocean acidity, whole marine ecosystems may collapse. Therefore no more tuna, salmon etc.

Ocean temperature increases in recent years have already pushed coral reefs to their limits with higher sea surface temperatures stressing corals and causing coral bleaching due to the death of the symbiotic algae, frequently resulting in large-scale mortality across regions of formerly pristine coral. What further effect will acidic conditions have? About 30 million of the world's poorest people directly rely on coral reef ecosystems for food, while they are exploited for goods and services of roughly $375 billion a year to nearly 500 million people. This includes food and tourism.

As with all such reports the World Bank report includes the statement that 

"research into the impacts of high concentrations of CO2 in the oceans is still in its infancy".

So it is not surprising that New Scientist reported contradictory evidence this week. Some scientists believe that as the world warms the oceans will emit more CO2 and studies of two independent sets of ice cores have shown evidence of this over the last 200 years.

Why is this? Well firstly melting sea ice, which produces very cold water that sinks to the bottom pushes CO2-rich deep ocean waters to the surface and increases the rate of ocean water mixing.

Secondly as anyone who has observed the bubbles forming on the base of a pan of water as it is heated on a stove knows - when you heat up water it releases gases it contains. Therefore warming of all this near surface CO2 rich water is thought likely to contribute to increasing atmospheric CO2.

Warmer oceans release CO2 faster than thought - environment - 25 April 2011 - New Scientist

The reality is that man made CO2 influences natural cycles in as yet unpredictable ways. This schematic shows clearly that while other aspects of the carbon cycle are offset by dynamic natural processes, there is as yet no dynamic offset capable of dealing with man's emissions.

Scientists Measure Start of Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction

A new study published in Nature this month reveals the shocking truth about mans impact upon the planet. The numbers of species under threat of extinction is growing fast, but says the report we are only in the first stages. Animal populations such as tigers, elephants and rhino are easy to measure.

The report is published by Anthony D. Barnosky and Charles Marshall both of UC Berkeley. Baronsky who is professor of integrative biology, curator of the Paleontology Museum and a Vertebrate Zoology research paleontologist says the tipping point has not yet been reached and it is not too late to save these critically endangered mammals and other such species. The causes are linked to destabilisation of sustainable habitats and ecological processes involved in climate controls, with resulting adverse weather events and invasion of opportunistic species and disease.

The common association with this potential impending mass extinction is that man has been involved in almost all the processes.

Marshall, who is UC Berkeley professor of Integrative Biology and director of the Paleontology Museum says we are not yet far down the road to extinction with only 1 to 2 percent of all species in the groups they looked at having so far gone extinct. So we are not in a crisis, and there are plenty of species to save.

The study originated in a graduate seminar Barnosky organized in 2009 to bring biologists and paleontologists together in an attempt to compare the extinction rate seen in the fossil record with today’s extinction record. These are “like comparing apples and oranges,” Barnosky said. For one thing, the fossil record goes back 3.5 billion years, while the historical record goes back only a few thousand years. In addition, the fossil record has many holes, making it is impossible to count every species that evolved and subsequently disappeared, which probably amounts to 99 percent of all species that have ever existed. A different set of data problems complicates counting modern extinctions.

Black Howler Monkey - IUCN Endangered

But, Barnosky adds "It's very important to devote resources and legislation toward species conservation if we don't want to be the species whose activity caused a mass extinction."

Has Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?

Belly dance scuppers 'disabled' ex-wife's divorce deal

Not the lady in question

A New York City woman who was getting $850 a month in alimony because she was supposedly disabled and unable to work had her payments slashed after her ex-husband spotted online photos of her belly dancing.

Not only that but Brian McGurk went to court after discovering evidence his ex-wife posted in her own blog writing that she danced for hours a day. She had claimed income support from her ex husband because she was supposedly disabled and unable to support herself through work.


Belly dance scuppers 'disabled' ex-wife's divorce deal