Amy Goodman writes: The floodwaters are rising, swamping cities, breaching levees. Tens of thousands are displaced. Many are dead. No, I am not talking about Hurricane Katrina, but about the Midwest United States. As the floodwaters head south along the Mississippi, devastating communities one after another, the media are overflowing with televised images of the destruction.

While the TV meteorologists document “extreme weather” with their increasingly sophisticated toolbox, from Doppler radar to 3-D animated maps, the two words rarely uttered are its cause: global warming. I asked former Energy Department official Joseph Romm, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, about the disconnect:

“Part of the reason is that the people who write about global warming for most newspapers and TV are not the same people as those who tend to cover weather. In general, the media is covering this as all sort of unconnected events, just regular weather maybe gone a little wacky. But, in fact, the scientific community has predicted for more than two decades now that as we pour more heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the planet will heat up, and that would redistribute water. If you heat up the planet … you evaporate more water, and areas that are wetter will tend to see more intense rainfall and deluges and earlier snowmelts, and all that will lead to flooding. So what we’re seeing is exactly what scientists have been telling us would happen because of human emissions.” …

As reporters stood in waist-high water in the flooded downtowns of major American cities, President George Bush basked in the sunlight in Washington, D.C., urging Congress to lift the ban on offshore oil drilling and on oil shale drilling, and to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. While regular people are getting hit in the wallet at the gas pump, paying now more than $4 per gallon for gasoline, the oil, coal and gas industries are reaping huge rewards, and applying pressure to open up protected spaces for resource extraction.

One of the candidates to replace Bush has a solution. When I asked Ralph Nader about global warming this week, he said: “We’ve got to have a national mission of converting our economy, and the example for the world is solar energy, 4 billion years of supply. It is environmentally benign, decentralized, makes us energy-independent and replaces the ExxonMobil/Peabody Coal/uranium complex. That is why we have got to go for economic, political, health and safety reasons.” (06/21/08)
more…

Michael T. Klare writes: As the pain induced by higher oil prices spreads to an ever growing share of the American (and world) population, pundits and politicians have been quick to blame assorted villains — greedy oil companies, heartless commodity speculators and OPEC. It’s true that each of these parties has contributed to and benefited from the steep run-up. But the sharp growth in petroleum costs is due far more to a combination of soaring international demand and slackening supply — compounded by the ruinous policies of the Bush Administration — than to the behavior of those other actors. …

… the invasion of Iraq — intended to ensure US control of the Gulf and a stable environment for the expanded production and export of its oil — has had exactly the opposite effect. Despite the many billions spent on oil infrastructure protection and the thousands of lives lost, production in Iraq is no higher today than it was before the invasion. Iraq has also become a rigorous training ground for extremists throughout the region, some of whom have now migrated to the oil kingdoms of the lower Gulf and begun attacking the facilities there — generating some of the recent spikes in prices.

Then there is the dilemma posed by Iran. With Saddam out of the picture, the Islamic regime in Tehran is viewed in Washington as the greatest threat to US mastery of the Gulf. This threat rests largely on Iran’s ability to attack oil shipping in the Gulf and ignite unrest among militant Shiite groups throughout the region, but its apparent pursuit of nuclear weapons has inflated the perceived menace significantly. To restrain Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, Washington has imposed economic sanctions on Iran and forced key US allies to abandon plans for developing new oilfields there. As a result Iran, with the world’s second-largest reserves after Saudi Arabia, is producing only about half the oil it could — another reason for the global constriction of supply.

But the Administration’s greatest contribution to the rising oil prices is its steady stream of threats to attack Iran if it does not back down on the nuclear issue. The Iranians have made it plain that they would retaliate by attempting to block the flow of Gulf oil and otherwise cause turmoil in the energy market. Most analysts assume, therefore, that an encounter will produce a global oil shortage and prices well over $200 per barrel. It is not surprising, then, that every threat by Bush/Cheney (or their counterparts in Israel) has triggered a sharp rise in prices. This is where speculators enter the picture. Believing that a US-Iranian clash is at least 50 percent likely, some investors are buying futures in oil at $140, $150 or more per barrel, thinking they’ll make a killing if there’s an attack and prices zoom over $200.

It follows, then, that while the hike in prices is due largely to ever increasing demand chasing insufficiently expanding supply, the Bush Administration’s energy policies have greatly intensified the problem. By seeking to preserve our oil-based energy system at any cost, and by adding to the “fear factor” in international speculation through its bungled invasion of Iraq and bellicose statements on Iran, it has made a bad problem much worse. (06/21/08)
more…

BBC Earth Science — Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than last year, despite a cold winter. Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the year began with ice covering a larger area than at the beginning of 2007. But now it is down to levels seen last June, at the beginning of a summer that broke records for sea ice loss.

Scientists on the project say much of the ice is so thin as to melt easily, and the Arctic seas may be ice-free in summer within five to 10 years.

“We had a bit more ice in the winter, although we were still way below the long-term average,” said Julienne Stroeve from NSIDC in Boulder, Colorado. “So we had a partial recovery. But the real issue is that most of the pack ice has become really thin, and if we have a regular summer now, it can just melt away,” she told BBC News.

In March, Nasa reported that the area covered by sea ice was slightly larger than in 2007, but much of it consisted of thin floes that had formed during the previous winter. These are much less robust than thicker, less saline floes that have already survived for several years.

A few years ago, scientists were predicting that Arctic waters would be ice-free in summers by about 2080.

Then computer models started projecting earlier dates, around 2030 to 2050.

Then came the 2007 summer that saw Arctic sea ice shrink to the smallest extent ever recorded, down to 4.2 million sq km from 7.8 million sq km in 1980.

By the end of last year, one research group was forecasting ice-free summers by 2013.

“I think we’re going to beat last year’s record melt, though I’d love to be wrong,” said Dr Stroeve. “If we do, then I don’t think 2013 is far off any more. If what we think is going to happen does happen, then it’ll be within a decade anyway.” (06/21/08)
more…

BBC Science – Nasa’s Phoenix lander has unearthed compelling evidence of ice on Mars, the US space agency believes.

Chunks of a bright material found in a trench dug by the craft have disappeared over four Martian days, suggesting they have vapourised. While digging in another trench, the lander’s arm connected with a hard surface at the same depth. The finds lend weight to suggestions water is locked up in a permafrost layer close to the planet’s surface.

“It must be ice,” said Dr Peter Smith, Phoenix’s principal investigator, who is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it’s ice.” …

Further confirmation of the ice theory came from another trench, known as Snow White 2. Digging there was halted when the scraper on the lander’s robotic arm hit a hard surface just under the soil layer.

“We have dug a trench and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other trench,” said Ray Arvidson of Washington University, St Louis, who is co-investigator for the robotic arm.

The arm also stopped three times earlier while digging in a “polygon”. This automatic reaction is a programmed response triggered when the scoop hits a hard, sub-surface region. “Polygons” are soil features seen on Earth when permafrost layers in soil expand and contract as temperatures rise and fall.

Phoenix now seems to have confirmed that similar features on Mars are caused by the same processes as those on this planet. (06/021/08)
more…

BBC Science — The
Jason-2 satellite was launched from Califonia on a mission to measure
the shape of the world’s oceans and track sea level rise. The satellite
will be taking readings with an accuracy of better than 4cm. Its data
will track not only sea level rise but reveal how the great mass of
waters are moving around the globe. This information will be
fundamental in helping weather and climate agencies make better
forecasts.

The satellite left Earth at 0746 GMT Friday, June 20,
2008 atop a Delta-2 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base. The
spacecraft, built by Thales Alenia Space, represents the joint efforts
of the US and French space agencies (Nasa and CNES), and the US and
European organisations dedicated to studying weather and climate from
orbit (Noaa and Eumetsat).

Jason-2 will provide a topographic
map of 95% of the Earth’s ice-free oceans every 10 days. Although we
think of our seas as being flat, they are actually marked by “hills”and “valleys”, where the highs and lows may be as much as two metres
apart.

Elevation is a key parameter for oceanographers. Just
as surface air pressure reveals what the atmosphere is doing above, so
ocean height will betray details about the behaviour of water down
below.

The data gives clues to temperature and salinity. When
combined with gravity information, it will also indicate current
direction and speed.

The oceans store vast amounts of heat from
the Sun; and how they move that energy around the globe and interact
with the atmosphere are what drive our climate system.

“The
ocean constitutes the long-term memory of the climate system; the
time-scales over which the ocean is changing are the climatic
timescales,” explained Mikael Rattenborg, the director of operations at
Eumetsat. “In order to understand climate, in order to be able to
predict the evolution of the atmosphere over months, years, and decades
even, you need to understand the ocean.” (06/21/08)
more…