Critical Times

Earth may be close to the warmest it has been in the last million years, especially in the part of the Pacific Ocean where potentially violent El Nino weather patterns are born.

James Hansen, of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, says this does not necessarily mean there will be more frequent El Ninos, which can disrupt normal weather around the world.

But he says it could well mean that these wild patterns will be stronger when they occur.

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ARCTIC ice cover has melted so much that a ship could have sailed unhindered from northern Europe to the North Pole a few weeks ago, according to images released this week by scientists.

Satellite images from August 23 to 25 have shown, for the first time, dramatic openings — larger than the size of the British Isles — in the Arctic’s year-round sea-ice pack north of Svalbard, and extending into the Russian Arctic all the way to the North Pole.

The images were acquired by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency.

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SAN FRANCISCO: California is suing six of the world’s largest car-makers over their alleged contribution to global warming.
The lawsuit, filed yesterday, is the first of its kind to seek to hold manufacturers liable for the damages caused by their vehicles’ emissions, Californian Attorney-General Bill Lockyer said.

It comes less than a month after Californian politicians adopted the nation’s first global warming law mandating a cut in greenhouse gas emissions.

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The seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica is reaching a record size previously seen in 2000 and 2003, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says.

“Our latest bulletin shows that the hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic has beaten that of last year and is rivalling the two largest on record – 2000 was the largest and 2003 was the second largest,” said WMO spokesman Mark Oliver.

The hole in the protective layer of gas in the earth’s upper atmosphere, which is caused by a specific type of pollution, emerged late in the season and grew faster than expected due to climatic conditions, said WMO ozone expert Dr Geir Braathens.

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The wild weather that has hit Tasmania this week has also produced one of the biggest waves ever recorded in Australia.

The wave was 19.5 metres tall.

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PERVEZ MUSHARRAF, the President of Pakistan, claimed last night that the Bush Administration threatened to bomb his country “into the Stone Age” if it did not co-operate with the US after 9/11, sharply increasing tensions between the US and one of its closest allies in the war on terrorism.
The President, who will meet Mr Bush in the White House today, said the threat was made by Richard Armitage, then the Deputy Secretary of State, in the days after the terror attacks, and was issued to the Pakistani intelligence director.

“The intelligence director told me that [Armitage] said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed.

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By Daniel Trotta in New York
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez has taken his anti-imperialist rhetoric to New York’s Harlem overnight and ridiculed US President George W. Bush as a puffed-up John Wayne wannabe. And a supportive crowd loved it.

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VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez made headlines for his United Nations speech on Wednesday calling US President George W. Bush “the devil himself,” but a reading suggestion he made in the same speech created a bestseller.

At the United Nations, anti-imperialist Chavez began his speech by displaying a copy of US writer Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance and recommended that Americans read it.

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British billionaire Sir Richard Branson has committed to spending all the profits from his airline and rail businesses, an estimated $US3 billion over the next 10 years, on combating global warming.

The Virgin Group chairman says the money will be spent on renewable energy initiatives within his company and on investments in bio-fuel research, development, production and distribution, as well as projects to tackle emissions contributing to global warming.

“We have to wean ourselves off our dependence on coal and fossil fuels,” the flamboyant 56-year-old entrepreneur said.

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Troops out of Iraq! Sun Sept 24, 2pm. Parliament House. Organised by NoWar SA.

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Ken Loach’s new film The Wind That Shakes the Barley is a brilliant work that brings to life a crucial moment in Irish history — the signing of the treaty with England in 1921 that partitioned the country into the Irish Free State in the south, with “Northern Ireland” remaining under British rule, and the consequent civil war between supporters and opponents of the treaty. Through the experiences of a small group of working people and rank-and-file Irish Republican Army fighters, the film deals with both the brutality of the British occupation, and the key internal political struggles of the day.

Opening in County Cork in 1920, we see Damien O’Donovan (Murphy), a young doctor who is cynical about the prospect of independence for Ireland, preparing to leave to work in England.

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EUROPEAN scientists voiced shock today as they viewed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe’s most northerly outpost to the North Pole.

The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Perennial sea ice – thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer – had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.

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LONDON: Chinese surgeons who performed the world’s first penis transplant had to remove the new organ after the recipient developed severe psychological problems.
Doctors say the operation was a surgical success but psychological issues suffered by the man and his wife meant the donated organ had to be removed after two weeks.

The man had the surgery after his own organ was damaged beyond repair in an accident this year, leaving him with a 1cm stump with which he was unable to urinate or have sexual intercourse.

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A SUMMIT of developing countries overnight has brought together virtually all the leaders of what Washington considers rogue states.

While several US allies participated in the summit of the 118-state Non-Aligned Movement (NAM,) they kept a low public profile, leaving the public stage to some of the most virulent foes of the US government.

Two days of talks by more than 55 heads of state and government, and other national leaders, got underway overnight with blistering verbal attacks on the US administration.

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Polar bears are drowning and receding Arctic glaciers have uncovered previously unknown islands in a drastic thaw that is being blamed on global warming.

Signs of huge changes are appearing around the Arctic region due to unusual warmth.

Rune Bergstrom, the environmental adviser to the Governor of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago about 1,000 kilometres from the North Pole, says islands as large as 300 metres by 100 metres have been revealed.

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“What we did was insane and monstrous, we covered entire towns in cluster bombs,” the head of an IDF rocket unit in Lebanon said regarding the use of cluster bombs and phosphorous shells during the war. Quoting his battalion commander, the rocket unit head stated that the IDF fired around 1,800 cluster bombs, containing over 1.2 million cluster bomblets.

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Australia is officially in the grip of an El Nino cycle and the National Climate Centre says it’s unlikely there’ll be relief until well into next year.

Dr David Jones, head of climate analysis at the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne says that unlike earlier El Ninos the effects of this one could be worse, because water stocks already are low.

The El Nino phenomenon involves an extreme warming of equatorial waters in the Pacific Ocean, bringing drought to eastern Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

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Satellite instruments can distinguish “old” Arctic ice from “new”
A Nasa satellite has documented startling changes in Arctic sea ice cover between 2004 and 2005.

The extent of “perennial” ice – thick ice which remains all year round – declined by 14%, losing an area the size of Pakistan or Turkey.

The last few decades have seen summer ice shrink by about 0.

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Richard Titelius

As the price of oil heads inexorably upwards it is affecting not only the price consumers are paying for carbon based fuels to power their vehicles but a range of products and services which rely upon these fuels. The viability of our cities especially ones with large urban sprawls such as Perth and most large urban centres in Australia will also be profoundly effected by the loss of cheap oil and dwindling or irregular supplies in the future.

With these twin concepts in mind Richard Heinberg and David Holmgren addressed a packed lecture theatre at the University of Western Australia on August 24.

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On September 4, the trade union movement held a memorial service for the workers’ hero John Cummins — “Cummo”, as he was known. Three thousand people from all around the country and all walks of life packed the Regent Theatre, a building saved by the Builders Labourers Federation’s (BLF) green bans in the 1970s, and heard many heartfelt reflections from speakers.

Cummins, who was the final BLF secretary and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) Victorian president, died on August 29 after a long battle against cancer.

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