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Perhaps someone should tell the Mad Monk…
Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes.The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably.
via In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming – NYTimes.com.
Rodney Tiffen writes on the last of three inquiries into the so-called Climategate emails however in his conclusion that the media created damage to popular support for action on carbon he fails to state the obvious question. Why?
Why did the mainstream media give so much credence and coverage to what was transparently a sensationalist stunt with the obvious purpose of derailing the Copenhagen summit?
A simple explanation may well be that the mainstream media, particularly the populist press were keen to reinforce their self importance in the minds of the public by “breaking” significant news. Since their reputation for accuracy is highly questionable anyway, truth was never really a consideration. They simply exploited the big story to sell their product.
While this simple and more conventional argument has some logic to it, there would seem to be a more sinister aspect to the source and motivation of some of the more outspoken mouthpieces for the denialist camp. Clearly they were politically motivated in their desire to undermine the science on climate change and furthermore they were enabled in that process by their position. The obvious objective was always to first undermine any consensus at Copenhagan with a second even more desirable objective to raise doubt in the minds of the public.
Have the reporters, journalists and editors responsible for spreading such a blatant piece of propaganda publicly admitted their wrong-doing and have they been summarily dismissed from their offices? No.
What’s more they wont be because they did exactly what they were supposed to do and did an excellent job of it. Strangely for an industry whose purpose is to manufacture consent, for once the industry decided to undermine popular belief in something it had helped create. It defies belief that such a course of action was merely the work of a handful of independent operators.
Climategate Scientists Cleared, But Media Slow To Report It.
Three months after the explosion and fire that killed 11 workers and released millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico BP seems to have finnally manged to cap the well.
Kent Wells (unfortunate name) announced rather stupidly that
“I am very excited that there’s no oil in the Gulf of Mexico,”
I am sure he meant there would be no new oil leaking from the site of Deepwater Horizon since it is extremely unlikely that all the oil that has leaked into the Gulf since April 20 has magically disappeared. Of course BP and the rest of the oil industry will be hoping that the cap will end public debate on the wisdom of offshore drilling and that the business of raping the world can continue in due course. As for the environmental consequences of 100 million gallons plus of crude oil leaked into the ocean, I am sure we will get bombarded with reassuring messages of how it isn’t really as bad as we might have imagined…
87 days later…via the Guardian
Union Climate Connectors joined volunteers from The Climate Project and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in a day of direct democracy. We met politicians at Parliament House to tell them, “Get on with it! The hundreds of thousands of Australians we represent and connect with want you to act on climate change.”
As the tropical storm season kicks in BP’s dubious contribution to a better world continues to poison the gulf with “current official estimates suggesting between 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day are leaking from the rogue well.” BP estimates it has collected over 24,000 barrels on Friday and about 11,640 barrels in the first half of Saturday.
Despite reports that oil continues to leak into the gulf at an alarming rate the continuing pressure on the stock of BP and the need for other oil companies to stay afloat has forced one man, a judge in the US, to overturn the Obama moratorium on new oil wells in the Gulf.
Oil companies say the government has not proven the need for a blanket ban on deep sea drilling and warn it will lead to major layoffs. Judge Feldman agreed and in his ruling on Tuesday sharply rebuked the U.S. government.
The downward pressure on BP’s stock price has now been linked to pensioner funds in the UK. So the global impact of our neverending thirst for stuff to put in our cars rewards the capitalists but punishes the workers potentially affected by the moratorium, undermines the financial security of retirees and still costs the earth.
Of course it is easy to suspect the motivation of a single judge delivering a decision that favours the oil companies despite the explicit wishes of the President. Even from Oz you can easily imagine various scenarios that would explain it. Local pressure to keep local businesses afloat, traditional distrust of the north by the south or straight out graft and corruption.
But there’s a far more troubling dimension to this news. It connects somewhat arbitrarily to the local mining reaction to the election of Julia Gillard as PM. Both outcomes seem to illustrate that public politics is subservient to other forces. Our democratically elected representatives can do no more than ask the capitalists to play along. When the capitalists decide not to play the game is up.
And just in case you thought there was some vestige of the socially progressive spirit alive in the US consider the news (both fair and balanced) from Fox News that in the US the minority Republican extreme right has somehow defeated an Obama bill that would extend unemployment benefits and provide financial assistance to the states to avert unemployment. The reason, government debt. Of course government expenditure on defence in the US has nothing what so ever to do with government debt, let alone the billions of dollars routinely handed private enterprises like Blackwater.
Government loses bid to keep oil drilling ban | Reuters.
Memory of the tragic Greek protests of a few weeks ago are fading fast, washed away in the never ending gush of Gulf Oil or rendered insignificant by Israeli bloody arrogance.Yet something in this report on Dublin protest organised by the Workers Solidarity Movement struck me as defining the greater problem. Maybe it’s the slogan they adopted -
“They didn’t share the wealth, why should we share the pain? Make the rich pay for the crisis”
because it seems to have far reaching connotations, one that I want to draw is the problem of anthropogenic global warming.
I’m an not going to debate the science, I’m not a scientist but my experience after 50 odd years on this part of the planet and what I see and read about other parts of the world as well as what I understand of the science and the opinion of scientists leads to a unshakeable conviction that our thirst for carbon multiplied by the sheer numbers involved has destabilised the relatively benign climatic condition the human race has enjoyed for the last 10,000 years. What’s more, the change now built into the system plus the potential for even more carbon to make its way into the atmosphere as well as the potential for methane liberated by warming the vast northern tundras creates a world changing scenario.
Now the denialist have tried to paint this picture as alarmist but that’s a tactic to divert attention from the causes and delay meaningful action to avert catastrophe. The conclusion we need to draw is that the denialist camp is part of the powers that be, maintaining the status quo as long as possible is their principle objective since the system as it is, continues to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a tiny elite.
The principle argument is this, avoiding the worst consequences of catastrophic climate change requires action on a scale similar to that which we see in times of war. The material wealth of world and our collective intellectual capacity needs to be harnessed if we are to peacefully avert the threats to humanity posed by carbon enhanced natural disasters. I have chosen war and peacefully here deliberately since war has historically been waged by the elite to defend privilege yet the stakes and technology have far surpassed any chance that war will be neatly constrained by geographic borders. War could easily wipe out the human race. It is not an option, but the only alternative is for the rich to disgorge some or most of their wealth and for the rest of us to work creatively and collectively to reduce our carbon pollution. Pretending we can go on as we are is surely the highest folly.
The anti-capitalist blocs to the Dail | Anarchist Writers.
BP’s Robert Dudley and Obama Administration’s Carol Browner singing from the same song book…it works everywhere else and it worked before so it must be right.
He (Dudley) also said that the failure of the blowout preventer, the mechanism that was meant to cut off the flow of oil in case of an emergency, is “something that is very, very troubling.”
“It is the piece of equipment that is not expected to fail, and that’s going to have implications for everyone around the world,” he said
Ms. Browner was asked why BP did not have a contingency plan that anticipated the kind of blowout that took place on the Deepwater Horizon. She said that deepwater wells have been drilled for several decades and there had never been this kind of accident.
U.S. Plans ‘for Worst’ in Gulf, Seeing Risk in Leak Strategy – NYTimes.com.
Another depressing instalment in BP’s disaster. Oil workers killed, a quarter of the Gulf declared off limits to fishing, millions of litres of oil and dispersant dumped into the ocean and a criminal series of mismanagement before and after the explosion on Deepwater Horizon. BP’s response…relief wells and they are not expected to be working until August.
‘Top kill’ fails, BP says, will try new tactic.
Obama’s sudden public posturing on Deepwater is all the more curious in light of this article over at Thruthout. If the buck stop with Mr Obama, it would be fascinating to know why the subject of a criminal investigation isn’t on the public agenda. The public admission by BP of an environmental disaster may be PR smokescreen hoping to avoid the subject. BP’s track record is highly questionable and the logic of having them clean up their own mess is extremely suspect.
A former investigator with the US EPA says
“BP is a convicted serial environmental criminal,” West said. “So, where are the criminal investigators? The well head is a crime scene and yet the potential criminals are in charge of that crime scene. Have we learned nothing from this company’s past behavior?”
t r u t h o u t | Ex-EPA Officials: Why Isn’t BP Under Criminal Investigation?.
