Morning News Roundup (18 September)

Climate Crisis

• President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming, senior Washington sources say. After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources.
  [...]
  Over the past few days rumours swept the capital that the "Toxic Texan" would announce his conversion this week, in an attempt to reduce the impact of a major speech tomorrow by Al Gore on solutions to climate change.
  [...]
  But Iain Murray, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Mr Bush's chief climate change cheerleader, is deeply alarmed: "We are left with the unpleasant conclusion that the only motivation is political." [Daily Kos reminds us that CEI is the ExxonMobil-funded group that put out the "carbon dioxide is life" ads when Al Gore's movie was opening this spring.] [The Independent]
  
  
• NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
  
  “I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most,” Hansen said Wednesday at the Climate Change Research Conference in California’s state capital. [MSNBC]
  
  
• A two-pronged approach to stabilizing climate, with cuts in greenhouse gas emissions as well as injections of climate-cooling sulfates, could prove more effective than either approach used separately. Tom Wigley of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) calculates the impact of injecting sulfate particles, or aerosols, every one to four years into the stratosphere in amounts equal to those lofted by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Pintabuto in 1991. If found to be environmentally and technologically viable, such injections could provide a "grace period" of up to 20 years before major cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions would be required, he concludes.
  [...]
  If climate change were addressed only through mitigation (emissions reduction), then massive cuts in emissions would be needed in order to keep temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2.0 degrees Celsius) over present levels. This amount of warming has often been cited as a benchmark of dangerous climate change. [TerraDaily]

Recent Huggs
[I've been submitting "green" news stories to the user-initiated eco-news service Hugg.com; you can see all my huggable items here, and if you create an account, you can submit news and give others a hugg]

• A study by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, one of the leading scientific bodies on global warming, says that Britain has four years to put in place a "road map" to ensure a low-carbon economy where petrol stations would be redundant and wind turbines would be a feature of every home by 2050. It also says the UK needs to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 70% over the next 30 years, which is greater than the amount called for by the government (60% by 2050). [Hugg | original news source]
  
  
• Shoppers will be able to take account of climate when deciding what to buy with the launch of a new mark. Manufacturers who go "carbon neutral" can apply for their labels to feature the Penguin Approved logo, which carries the assurance: "No Global Warming". Penguin Approved has been devised by non-profit Belu. To get approval, producers will have to measure the emissions of greenhouse gases caused by their goods, reduce those emissions over time and offset the remaining under the "Gold Standard" scheme run by the World Wildlife Fund. [Hugg | original news source]
  
  
• With Seattle City Light's Green Up program, customers can now invest in more renewable resources like the Stateline Wind Project in Eastern Washington, and other renewable energy projects. And through September 30, residential City Light customers who join the program for the first time will receive a Pagliacci Pizza gift card worth $15. [Hugg | original news source]

BushCo's Wars

• A suicide bomber on a bicycle killed four NATO soldiers handing out notebooks and pens to children in southern Afghanistan on Monday, a day after NATO declared the area free of Taliban insurgents. [Reuters via Yahoo!]
  
  
• Brigadier Ed Butler was blunt. "The violence in Afghanistan is now worse than in Iraq," he told a meeting of NATO's defence chiefs last week. He was referring to the ferocious battles that have assailed NATO troops since they took over most combat operations in Afghanistan from US-led forces in August.
  
  Butler is head of NATO's 4,500 strong British contingent. He says "hundreds" of Taliban guerrillas have been killed in the fighting. But so have dozens of NATO soldiers and scores of civilians, including 14 in a suicide attack in Kabul on 8 September. Canadian Defence Minister, Gordon O Connor, was more sober in his assessments gleaned from a tour of NATO Canadian troops in Afghanistan's restive southern provinces. "We cannot eliminate the Taliban," he said simply. [Al-Ahram Weekly]
  
  
• A wave of seven suicide car bombs and explosions rocked the oil-rich city of Kirkuk on Sunday, killing at least 26 people and wounding 85 others. The attacks were the most recent bloodshed in a bitter struggle between Arabs and Kurds to take control of Kirkuk, the country's third-largest city. Iraq's new constitution calls for a referendum to determine whether the Kirkuk region will become a part of the Kurdish north. [WaPo]
  
  
• In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantánamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
  
  Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq. Many say they were often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken.
  
  Defenders of the system say it's an unfortunate necessity in the battles to pacify Iraq and Afghanistan, and to keep suspected terrorists out of action. [AP via Seattle Times]
  
  
• After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, applicants who applied for reconstruction jobs “didn’t need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.” Pentagon officials “posed blunt questions” to candidates like whether they voted for George W. Bush in 2000, and whether they supported Roe v. Wade. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]

GO-Team News

• Although saying he has no plans to run for president in 2008, former vice president Al Gore has nonetheless left the door ever so slightly ajar. It's a good bet that door will swing open a good bit wider come next May.
  
  That is when Gore is scheduled to publish his next book. With no fanfare, he signed a few weeks ago with Penguin Press to write "The Assault on Reason."
  
  As described by editor Scott Moyers, the book is a meditation on how "the public arena has grown more hostile to reason," and how solving problems such as global warming is impeded by a political culture with a pervasive "unwillingness to let facts drive decisions."
  
  While that may sound abstract, both the subject matter and the timing of the release have an unmistakable subtext. In 2004, Gore cheered liberals when he lashed at President Bush for allegedly falling captive to right-wing special interests and taking flight from "fact-based analysis." If the book strikes a chord, it will produce new momentum for Gore to make another bid for the White House, presumably fueled in large part by anti-Iraq-war Democrats. [WaPo]
  
  
• Sixteen months before the opening-gun 2008 Iowa caucuses, Obama has replaced Al Gore as the season's most beguiling -- yet probably unattainable -- alternative to Hillary Clinton. His rapturous return last month to Kenya, the land of his father's birth, underscored that Obama is truly the ranking African-American politician. But no transatlantic journey could match the symbolism of Obama's quick flight Sunday across the Mississippi to serve as the star attraction at Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin's annual steak fry.
  [...]
  Standing on an outdoor stage decorated with pumpkins and bales of hay, Obama mocked the Bush administration's policies without ever resorting to the shrill invective that has become a staple of partisan rhetoric. "I've had enough of using terrorism as a wedge issue," Obama declared forcefully, before shifting to a lighter tone. "I don't know about you, but the war against terrorism isn't supposed to crop up just between September and November in even-numbered years. That seems to be the pattern. There is a sudden burst of activity, a sudden urgency, three months before an election."
  
  For the most part, there was little new in Obama's speech, since the nearly 40-minute address, which he delivered without referring to notes, was mostly an artful pastiche of earlier rhetoric. Some of the anecdotes were powerful, such as Obama's encounter with a 105-year-old black woman at a campaign rally during his 2004 Senate race. What was striking through much of the speech was not what the fledgling senator said but the fierce attention that Obama inspired from the audience. The faces in the crowd radiated a rapt intensity that you see in patriotic movies from the 1930s and 1940s but rarely in real life. [Salon]