Friday, May 31, 2013

ANS -- Dept. of Homeland Security Forced to Release List of Keywords Used to Monitor Social Networking Sites

Here is a link to an article that includes the list of words Homeland Security uses to monitor your social networking.  I tried to copy the whole article to send to you, but it wouldn't go through.  I got it back with the comment: "content not acceptable here".


Dept. of Homeland Security Forced to Release List of Keywords Used to Monitor Social Networking Sites

Find it here:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/reuvencohen/2012/05/26/department-of-homeland-security-forced-to-release-list-of-keywords-used-to-monitor-social-networking-sites/   
--Kim

Monday, May 20, 2013

ANS -- Benghazi Hearings: Congress as Reality TV

This is Doug Muder's take on the Benghazi "scandal".   It's weird politics, or something else.  Interesting theory. 
Find it here:   http://weeklysift.com/2013/05/13/benghazi-hearings-congress-as-reality-tv/#comments   
--Kim



making sense of the news one week at a time

Benghazi Hearings: Congress as Reality TV

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I've had a hard time figuring out how to write about Benghazi without becoming part of the problem. So much nonsense has been spouted that simply saying "Benghazi" in certain circles is code for "impeach President Obama". And that puts the rest of us in the don't-think-about-an-elephant zone, where even explaining why something is nonsense reinforces it.

This week it got worse. Wednesday, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held new hearings on Benghazi, showcasing what Chairman Darrell Issa referred to as "whistleblowers" who "revealed new information that undermines the Obama Administration's assertion that there are no more questions left to answer about Benghazi." (When has there ever been a subject with "no more questions left to answer"? If that's the goal, hearings will continue forever.)

In anticipation of those hearings, apparently without knowing exactly what the witnesses would say, Mike Huckabee predicted on his Fox News show: "I believe that before it's all over, this president will not fill out his full term." ( Senator Inhofe at least waited for the hearings to happen before he predicted impeachment.) Repeating a talking point I heard elsewhere on Fox and saw in comments all over the internet, Huckabee claimed Benghazi was "more serious" than Watergate "because four Americans did in fact die" ­ a statement that could only make sense if President Obama had been part of a plot to kill them. (As Bob Cesca has pointed out, American embassies and consulates were attacked 13 times during the Bush administration, with far a death total far beyond four. You probably don't remember any of those incidents.)

If you listened to such predictions at length ­ and they were made 24/7 on Fox and the rest of the conservative media ­ you were primed to jump straight from "new Benghazi revelations" to "high crimes and misdemeanors".

Then we get to Wednesday. Three State Department insiders did testify, and they did provide new information that made the Obama administration look bad. However, none of the new information is on the scale that the hype predicted, and much of it contradicted conspiracy theories popular on the Right. But their testimony did give an excuse for headlines about "new Benghazi revelations" that then fueled even more discussion of some of the same conspiracy theories that the testimony directly contradicted.

Let's see if we can sort this out. Before listening to anybody's commentary, I recommend looking at the Wikipedia article on the attack as a whole. Seeing the basic outline of what-happened-when will immunize you to a lot of the obvious nonsense being thrown around.

Like any event that turns out badly, Benghazi leaves three avenues for criticism: lack of preparation and precautions before the fact, debatable decisions made during the event, and inaccurate statements made after the event. (A comparison to the "other" 9-11 is useful: The government ignored warnings that attacks were imminent; in hindsight, you can imagine pulling first-responders out of the second tower as soon as the first one collapsed; and clean-up crews were given bad information about the toxicity of the debris.)

At Benghazi, you can argue that the State Department sent people into too dangerous a situation with too little protection. You can blame the administration for the deployment and Congress for not appropriating enough for security.

You can also wish that some kind of rescue force could have been sent to save the four American lives. That's the gist of the most quoted testimony Wednesday: Gregory Hicks talked very emotionally about four special forces soldiers who wanted to get from Tripoli to Benghazi, but couldn't. When you look at actual timelines, though, the transport plane they failed to get onto arrived at Benghazi after the four victims were already dead. Hicks also wished an F-16 could have flown over Benghazi as a show of force that might have discouraged the second attack. But the Pentagon has made it clear that the nearest planes, based in Italy, are not on 24-hour alert and actually could not have been scrambled (together with the needed in-air refueling tanker) in time.

And finally, you can criticize what the administration said about the attacks afterward. This is probably the most legitimate criticism, but it's also the least consequential, because at that point the attack had already happened and the four Americans were already dead. You can accuse the administration of making misleading statements ­ like no administration ever did that before ­ but nothing in the aftermath is remotely criminal or actionable. (It's even arguable that what we see in the changing talking points is an ordinary bureaucratic turf fight, unrelated to the November election.)

Only a charlatan can say that Benghazi is "worse than Watergate" and then focus on Susan Rice's performance on the Sunday talk shows. Nobody died because of what Rice said on "Meet the Press".

To me, a story that is every bit as important as as Benghazi itself is: What has happened to our national conversation that has caused us to discuss Benghazi in such an outrageous way? It's tempting to say, "Oh, that's just politics." But it really isn't, or at least it didn't used to be. Try to imagine the Democrats in Congress treating 9-11 this way: "It's far worse than Watergate; thousands of Americans are dead."

There was certainly no lack of 9-11 conspiracy theories that Democrats could have winked and nodded at. Plenty of crazies put up web pages claiming that 9-11 was an inside job. One poll claimed that a third of the country believed the Bush administration had at least some role in letting the attacks happen.

Democrats in Congress could have pandered to that view. The model Republicans have used with Benghazi (and Solyndra and Fast & Furious, both of which have fizzled as scandals, despite being "worse than Watergate" for a time) would have worked just as well: Don't endorse any specific theory with checkable details, but announce over-the-top general judgments that only the most extreme conspiracy theories could justify. Lump all the theories under one vague label (Benghazi!) and leave your rhetoric slippery, so that you can encourage all the nutcases without pinning yourself down. Turn every new detail into a promise that more revelations are coming.

The Democratic leadership never went down that road. 9-11 was a national tragedy, not a political football. There were hearings and investigations, and some people in both parties asked tough questions, but that's where the comparison ends. Getting tagged as a Truther was the kiss-of-death in the Democratic establishment. ( Ask Van Jones.)

But the Republican leadership has gone down that road with Benghazi. And the result is that lots of the Republican rank-and-file will tell you that Obama should be impeached for Benghazi!, even though they can't quite say what Benghazi! means, beyond "four Americans are dead". On the Reality-Based Community blog, Andrew Sabl spelled it out:

At this point in the career of a scandal, or attempted scandal, there are often disagreements over whether the charges are true. But I can't remember the last time I've seen a scandal where I don't even know what they are.

Sabl described what specific charges would look like and challenged his readers to come up with some. None did.

Steve Benen made a similar point:

Eight months after the attack itself, I know Republicans think there's been a cover-up, but I haven't the foggiest idea what it is they think has been covered up. For all the talk of a political "scandal," no one seems capable of pointing to anything specific that's scandalous. For all the conspiracy theories, there's no underlying conspiracy to be found.

And so Wednesday, Chairman Issa advertised "whistleblowers". But he never said what exactly they blew the whistle on.

Again, compare to Democrats during the Bush administration. Lots of liberals called for Bush's impeachment, but they offered specific grounds: breaking the laws against torture, or fabricating evidence to invade Iraq. You could argue with their reasoning or their evidence, but you knew what it was. Democrats in Congress could have made hard-to-pin-down code words out of Abu Ghraib or Katrina, and linked them (deniably) to wild conspiracy theories, but they didn't.

It's tempting to stop there, with the implication that Democrats in Congress have more honesty or civic virtue than Republicans. But I think there's a deeper level to examine. Democrats didn't pander to the third of the country that was open to a 9-11 conspiracy theories because it was only a third of the country. You can't win elections with 33% of the vote.

Republicans are clearly not thinking that way. As I listen to Republican politicians talk about Benghazi, they seem to be making no effort at all to speak to the majority of Americans or to offer evidence that might convince a swing voter. They are talking to their base, which is probably about a third of the country.

What's going on? I think David Frum had it right: "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox." The point of Benghazi! isn't to deliver a majority of votes for the next Mitt Romney. The point is to get ratings for Fox and subscribers for Glenn Beck. The Conservative Entertainment Complex has taken control of the Republican Party and is managing the Party for its own purposes. A third of the country? It may not win many elections, but it's a fabulous audience for an entertainer.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

ANS -- Elizabeth Warren Slams Wall Street Again

Here's a short article on what's happening with banks and Elizabeth Warren in the Senate.  I hope you are all following Elizabeth Warren's career.  Finance is her area of expertise.  The Banksters and Greedsters are at it again -- trying to make sure they can steal all of our money even faster, and Ms. Warren is trying to stop them.  It doesn't look good though -- we will have to get vocal about this and help her. 
Find it here:  http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/elizabeth-warren-jack-lew-derivative-bill-house    
--Kim


Congress, Corporations , Politics, Regulatory Affairs

Elizabeth Warren Slams Wall Street Again

­By Erika Eichelberger
| Fri May. 17, 2013 2:29 PM PDT []   Wikimedia Commons

On Thursday, bank-basher Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slammed several bills headed for the House floor that would severely weaken Wall Street reform.

The Dodd-Frank Act, the 2010 law aimed at preventing another financial crisis, "put in place a variety of measures that work together as a system to protect consumers, hold big banks accountable, and reduce the risk of future crises," Warren said in a statement. "It is dangerous for Congress to amend the derivatives provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act." (Derivatives are financial products that have values based on underlying numbers, like crop prices or interest rates; some economists believe these products helped cause the 2007 financial collapse.)

Warren's condemnation of the bills, which just passed out of the House Financial Services Committee (HFSC), echoes a May 6th letter from Treasury secretary Jack Lew to House Financial Services Chair Jeb Hensarling attacking the bills. "The derivatives provisions in the Wall Street Reform Act constitute an important part of the reforms being put into place to strengthen our financial system by improving transparency and reducing risk for market participants," Lew wrote in the letter. "These reforms should not be weakened or repealed." Last year, former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner  denounced a series of nearly identical bills.

One of the bills now headed to the House floor would expand the types of trading risks that banks can take on. Another would allow certain derivatives that are traded within a corporation to be exempt from almost all new Dodd-Frank regulations. Financial reform advocates say these kinds of trades can still pose a risk to the wider financial system. A third bill would allow big, multinational US-based banks to escape US regulations by operating through international arms.

"Wall Street's aggressive determination paid off last week" when the bills passed out of committee, Warren said. The bills also have bipartisan support, and have a good chance of being taken up in the Senate. If they do, Warren says she'll go to battle: "Now is no time to go backwards," she said. "I will do what I can in the United States Senate to stand up to those who would chip away at reform."

ANS -- This Week in Poverty: Fighting Poverty Through Wall Street Accountability

this is a pretty long but good article on getting our fractured movements together and doing something about the plight of America.  He has some good ideas, stated mildly, for those of you who don't want anything too radical....
Find it here:  http://www.thenation.com/blog/174404/week-poverty-fighting-poverty-through-wall-street-accountability #  
--Kim


This Week in Poverty: Fighting Poverty Through Wall Street Accountability

Greg Kaufmann on May 17, 2013 - 10:32 AM ET
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(Photo: Press Association via AP Images)

This year, I've been focused on how anti-poverty activists can move from a defensive battle defined by trying to save what needs to be saved during these budget debates, to an offensive one, laying out a vision that inspires ongoing, unified action and builds a vibrant movement that connects with people in their communities.

I offered one modest proposal for an " anti-poverty contract"­five issues that impact both low-income and middle class people­around which activists and groups could organize. The Western Center on Law & Poverty and a handful of other national and local groups are trying to build an effort around that idea.

However, when you consider the scale of the problems we face­and what inspires people to take action­clearly much, much more is needed. As I wrote previously, to build a new anti-poverty movement will require the kind of organizing and actions that are as creative, visible and gripping as the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Enter Stephen Lerner.

Lerner is a labor and community organizer who has spent more than three decades organizing hundreds of thousands of janitors, farm workers, garment workers and other low-wage workers into unions. These efforts resulted in increased wages, first-time health benefits, paid sick days and other improvements on the job. The architect of the historic Justice for Janitors campaign, he is currently working with unions and community groups across the country to break Wall Street's anti-democratic grip on our politics and our economy.

Lerner lays out a powerful case about the intersection between poverty and Wall Street accountability­and how a Wall Street accountability movement can transform an economy that offers so few pathways out of poverty, and so many ways to keep people impoverished.

Here is our conversation:

Greg Kaufmann: Why is the Wall Street accountability movement now the focus of your work, and what is the potential you see there?

Stephen Lerner
: One of the challenges is that there are so many things wrong right now­that you can be involved in any of a thousand causes. The problem is if they are disconnected it doesn't add up to anything. So, people who are opposed to poverty have a dozen different things they'd like to move on the Hill, none of which are likely to pass at this time.

So the focus on Wall Street is: How do you connect all of these different battles? And, in fact, are there core things in common that drive them together?

If you look at some of the biggest issues of the day­whether it's the loss of wealth in communities of color, the housing crisis, the student debt crisis, local and state governments cutting jobs and services because of debt­you can connect all of these issues to the original economic crisis of 2008, and the growing and continued dominance of the Wall Street big banks.

The majority of people in this country are either impacted by student debt, the ongoing housing crisis or the crisis of the public sector. And you can trace so much of it to Wall Street. This means instead of having twenty separate campaigns, you can have one campaign, that says how do we rebalance and reorganize the economy so that it benefits everybody­not just a teeny elite at the top.

How does the effort to address these three issues intersect with the fight against poverty in particular?

Let's start with housing. In this country, for many workers and people of color, wealth isn't in the stock market, or the Cayman Islands­it's in a home. And the banks first preyed on folks through subprime loans pre-crisis, making enormous profits while putting people in danger. Then when the bubble burst, millions of people lost their homes, and those who didn't have had outrageous payments because the subprime loans exploded. Now you still have 13 million families that are underwater­owing more on their loans than their homes are worth.

In Latino communities, 66 percent of their wealth was lost, half as a result of housing. In the African-American community, it was 53 percent. Fifty years of the gains of the civil rights movement and the expansion of the economy were wiped out overnight, pushing millions into poverty. If you add to that the people who are unemployed as a result of the crashed economy­we just have this strange thing that happened: the banks created a disaster, and economists and politicians said, "That's terrible for the economy, let's give them trillions." And then the folks who were actually hit the hardest were forced into poverty.

On student debt: funding to public education was dramatically cut, which obviously hurts poor people and workers the most. As it was cut, people had to take out loans. So 37 million people have now run up a trillion dollars in student debt. It's a burden no matter what, but if you come from a family that doesn't have means, you now graduate from school with a crushing debt burden, and then there aren't jobs available. And there's a vicious cycle: you cut the budget of public universities, to give tax breaks to banks and big companies, who respond by creating toxic loan packages for students that they make a profit on. And because public funding of universities has been cut­the schools need to borrow more money in order to operate and build, so the banks get a piece of that action, too. And now university endowments are investing in Sallie Mae­the largest private student loan lender­so students have to take out loans to go to school, and the university endowment profits off those loans.

There are much better ways to fund education­like by [publicly] funding education so people can actually afford it, instead of creating these twenty layers that let Wall Street suck money out at every step.

So individuals and families are getting crushed by housing and education debt, and then you say public debt completes a sort of perfect storm?

That's right, what we call predatory public loans. So three things have happened: Wall Street has taken advantage of the desperation of cities and municipalities since the crisis; the deals are so complex that public entities don't know what they are getting into; and third is that Wall Street gets its money at a subsidized, Too Big to Fail rate, and in the case of the discount window, almost for free. Banks get money at .075 percent interest from the Federal Reserve, and they then create all sorts of ways to make more and more money off the spread, from the public sector.

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Take interest rate swaps, for example. On the surface it sounds like not a bad idea­a bank says they will protect a city from a fluctuating interest rate by locking it in at, say, 4 percent. If it goes higher, they eat it. And if it goes lower, they make money. But they then add so many different formulas and traps, that all of a sudden when the whole thing blew up during the crisis and a city is hemorrhaging money, and they want to get out of it, it turns out that they have an exit fee that's extraordinary and they can't afford it. In Detroit, the city had to pay around $470 million on a series of bond and interrelated swap deals gone bad at the same time they were laying off police and firemen. So then you end up in fights like, "Do we help the poor, or do we take workers that are middle class and cut their wages so they'll be poor?"

Describe what this movement looks like­what are some of the asks and how do you see it potentially playing out?

There are multiple levels of how Wall Street is impoverishing the country, and so different people can engage in different ways.

On housing, in Atlanta, Minneapolis, all over California­one piece is the Home Defenders League and Occupy Our Homes. This involves physical encampments, blockading the police and saying you're not going to take my home, or my neighbor's home. It's incredibly vibrant, street-level resistance­and it's often successful. And as folks are successful, it grows. This is all nonviolent, and involves people who are willing to go to jail.

If you take it up a level, there is a simple policy demand, which is that banks should reduce principal on homes to current market value. That means if you're paying a $300,000 mortgage on a home that's worth $200,000, the bank should rewrite it to that value. If we did that, it would save $700 billion to $1 trillion­that's how much people are underwater­and generate $101 billion in economic activity, create 1.5 million jobs, and the average underwater homeowner would save $7,700 a year.

There are cities all over the country that are now exploring using eminent domain to seize these underwater mortgages and rewrite them with principal reductions. For years eminent domain was the tool to take advantage of poor people­tear up a neighborhood, build a highway, build a stadium and tell people they will be paid what their homes are worth on the open market. They said it was for the public good, even as it devastated once stable neighborhoods. We're saying let's flip that on it's head­for the public good, let's seize these mortgages and rewrite them at current market value so people can stay in their homes.

On student debt, there is a gamut of activity ranging from student activism on campuses, to state and local legislation, to sit-ins at the Sallie Mae shareholders meeting, to challenging the Education Department on why they have as contractors like Sallie Mae that are profiting off this disaster. The movement includes Senator Elizabeth Warren's brilliant bill to give students loans at the same rate we give to banks. Why should banks get money cheap and student loans be more expensive? And it includes people on their college campuses­a movement around Big Banks Off Campus­because the banks shouldn't be allowed to come on campus and sell their credit cards and figure out new ways to indebt students.

Finally, on public debt, people are fighting back. In the case of Oregon, SEIU Local 503 calculated that the state lost $110 million because of the LIBOR manipulations. So here's what happens: the SEIU public sector union goes in to negotiate with the state representing public employees, and the state says we want to cut all of these services for poor people. And the workers themselves are often poor­homecare workers who haven't had a raise in six years. The state says there is no money. And how do you argue if there's no money? Except that the money was stolen! And so the movement is changing the debate. This is not about: Are public employees overpaid? Are their too many benefits for poor people? Should we have pre-K or not? There are incredible sums of money out there, but we've devised a system that drains it from the bottom to the top. Why don't we cut out the middleman? Like let's have an infrastructure bank and loan the money at cost. Let's figure out a way so banks can't make more than a certain amount of money on the spread. And I know that gives the free-market people heart attacks, because this is intervening in the market, but there is no market. Because five banks control it, and where they get their money is from taxpayers. It's our money.

To what extent are these three threads­on student debt, housing debt and public debt­coalescing into a movement so they aren't the kind of independent, divided struggles that you suggest hold us back from big victories?

As the campaigns develop, the overlap happens more and more. For example, people are seeing the relationship between housing debt and student debt­needing to take out student loans because your family's house isn't worth anything anymore so you can't help finance an education through a second mortgage like you might have in the past. At the Wells Fargo meeting at Salt Lake City, folks campaigning about student debt showed up, and so did people campaigning on housing, and so did people about the environment. So, on an organic level on the street, people are seeing it more and more.

After I covered the actions at the Wells Fargo shareholders meeting, a progressive friend and writer told me, "The activists seem to think banks can't ignore their message, that being heard is equivalent to making change." How do you think a movement like this actually could make principal reduction, for example, a reality?

First, the enemy of change is the notion that if you are not winning at that moment then you are losing. These things never have an even flow. It's not like you start one day, you have steady escalation­they go up and down. In Taylor Branch's book At Canaan's Edge, you read these transcripts of FBI wiretaps on civil rights leaders and it's them saying, "We're losing"… or "so and so was killed"… or "we have in-fighting, how will we win?" But when we look back at that period now, we see that the civil rights bill was going to pass, it was all going to happen. I think when you are in the middle of the battle, under siege, you can't see the forest for the trees.

But your friend's critique is fair in that we've been screaming about the banks for years, and they are more powerful than ever­the top six banks now control 73 percent of the total assets in the US banking sector. However, we've started to identify some levers that we think begin to level the playing field. Eminent domain is one example­if you're not willing to reduce principal, then we'll use the power of the city to force you to do it. On LIBOR, city after city is investigating whether they can sue to get their money back. Many are exploring, and some have passed, bills that say if banks don't meet certain standards the cities won't deal with them anymore. Los Angeles, Oakland, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have all passed responsible banking ordinances recently.

Also, the banks' greed and hubris is so great that [there are] new avenues to go after them. So if you look at the litigation that California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed: this is where the banks essentially did the same thing with credit card loans that they did with mortgages­they moved to litigation without accurate documentation to even show that people owed them money. We are seeing more opportunities for growing protest, more litigation and more public policy changes. You even now have Ohio Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown and Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter working together on a bill to break up the big banks.

Is there a role in this movement for people and organizations that are focused on the Hill?

Petitions can raise important issues and get people involved. Lobbying can be important­but I think what we need to do is connect all of this to an analysis of who the villains are and why the economy is unbalanced. This is not a problem of lack of policy­we have unlimited great policy ideas. This is not a problem of lack of money to fund anti-poverty programs. This is a problem of power. I think people need to accept that there is no real significant economic and political change as long as the finance sector is so dominant. The DC-centric stuff will be far more effective if there is something out there in the rest of the country brewing. If this is just an intellectual policy debate about who has the best idea and who has the best statistics, we're doomed.

To win­to really make the kinds of structural changes you are talking about­does the public protest need to be as constant and visible, engaging and creative, as Occupy Wall Street?

Yes, we need to get to that. And there is an interesting myth about Occupy that somehow it just emerged out of nowhere. But many of the people who were engaged in it were part of other battles before Occupy Wall Street. The month before Occupy, community groups were doing rallies and sit-ins at banks all over the country. So you never know when things are going to take off. Why did the Vietnam protests take off when they did? Or the civil rights protests? You never know what triggers something to go from dedicated souls to a mass movement.

But your key point is right­the system is currently working for the banks and super-rich. And as long as they feel it's working we won't really achieve change. And so some combination of mass disruptive protest­nonviolent­of all sorts of local legislative activity; of a growing change in the narrative. Some mix and match of that has to put the kind of heat on them that makes them feel they have to negotiate over these issues­that they need, for example, to fix mortgages because the alternative is worse. We need to have a better system on student loans, because the alternative is worse. I think that's really our challenge.

In a recent piece, you suggest that anger is insufficient to sustain a movement­that what keeps people going is love. Can you describe what you mean by that?

There are four things currently that are self-defeating for progressives and labor folks: one, the mantra of progressives is built on "we're losing, there's no hope, we're getting clobbered." That leads to the slogan of much of the progressive movement, which is "Let's fight for small, incremental, not particularly important change now." So what we largely talk about isn't very inspiring. We talk about stopping cuts­stopping bad­not how we win good things.

The great movements­take the story of Exodus­they didn't say, "Can the Egyptians whip us less often?" They said, "We're leaving. We're outta here. We're gonna form a new country, a place where we can be free." Gandhi, South Africa, the civil rights movement­all of these movements were based on this idea that there is something profoundly better that we can fight for. And I think for many of us in America we've lost that ability to say we're engaged in this­not just because we care about principal reduction but because we believe in the richest country on earth we can transform society and redistribute wealth and power. So, we need to have a vision that's inspiring and not be afraid to be called a little utopian.

Second, we need an analysis, a narrative, of who the bad guys are that are concentrating wealth and power. All of the organizing I was involved with­with the garment workers, the farmworkers and the janitors­they all had an analysis of who really had the power and could fix things, and I think we've forgotten how to do that.

Third, we need to think about the strategy and tactics that give us leverage, so this is not simply yelling and screaming. And fourth is about love­which is that people are involved both out of self-interest because they want to make their lives better; but also because they realize their life is better if they help make other lives better.

If you look at the great movements that's what happens­some combination of vision, analysis, strategy and this deep, deep feeling that by supporting and sacrificing for others­in the labor movement we call it solidarity­you not only transform your own life, but you transform the lives of people around you and in doing that transform how society operates. That's the roots of how we build what we have to build.

* * *

End "Too Big to Jail": May 18–23, Washington, DC

If you think what Lerner has to say makes sense, here's an immediate opportunity to get involved. Next week, families on the front lines of the foreclosure crisis are traveling from across the country to the nation's capital to make their voices heard.

Their message is simple: five years into the financial crisis, Wall Street has still not been held accountable, and communities are still suffering. In fact, a new report from Alliance for a Just Society, the New Bottom Line and Home Defenders League shows that $192.6 billion in wealth was lost due to the foreclosure crisis in 2012, and this year another 13 million homes are at risk of foreclosure with $221 billion in wealth on the line. (See "Studies/Briefs" below for more information on this report.)

It's long past time for the administration to prosecute those who violated the law and for the banks to repay individuals, families and communities that continue to suffer losses­beginning with reducing their mortgages to fair market value.

"We can't have two systems of justice in this country: one for the rich and powerful, where Wall Street criminals are actually rewarded with bailouts and huge bonuses, and another for the rest of us," said Vivian Richardson, who will be in DC next week after successfully defending her home from foreclosure with the help of members of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment. "These Wall Street banksters stole many homes, and are still committing crimes. It is time for them to be held accountable."

There will be home-defense and nonviolent, civil disobedience trainings on May 18–19 and a rally and march to the Department of Justice on Monday, May 20. The activists will attempt to meet with Attorney General Eric Holder and are prepared to take direct action if that doesn't happen­blocking entrances, setting up an Occupy-style encampment, getting arrested and staying in jail.

To participate in the Week of Action, you can RSVP here. To take part in the direct action on May 20, fill out this form.

Read more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/174404/week-poverty-fighting-poverty-through-wall-street-accountability#ixzz2TiEHxXI6

Fwd: Where Do We Go From Here Post Election??

Hi -- This has been sitting on my computer since the election, but it's a good reminder that the President EXPECTS us to push him hard if we are concerned about something. 
--Kim

Hi -- this was sent to me by one of our readers.  Good article about where do we go from here.  It's about staying engaged and making the president do what we want him to -- having his back, as they say. 
--Kim




Hi, you might find this article of interest.



Begin forwarded message:

From: The Pen <theteam@peaceteam.net >
Date: November 7, 2012 12:30:47 AM PST
To: ...
Subject: Where Do We Go From Here Post Election??


Dear Friends and Activists:

When President Obama was challenged a couple months ago about various
disappointments, he said it was not about him, it was about us. That
is to say, WE were to blame for not pushing him harder. We agree.

As one prominent example, because we did not stand strong enough
demanding real health care reform in the form of single payer, we
ended up with a bad bill that was a part of the mood of
disappointment. And candidate Romney had the gall to solicit that
disappointment as a reason to vote for him instead, as if he would
not have changed things for the worse.

So unless we get cracking right now, and advocate for policy change
in voices that WILL NOT be ignored, in another two years we will
again be faced with a choice between candidates hard to defend and
even greater evils.

With all that in mind, we take note of something President Obama had
to say last night in his victory speech.

"The role of citizens in our Democracy does not end with your vote.
America's never been about what can be done for us. It's about what
can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but
necessary work of self-government."

Isn't that what we've been saying all along, that is is not enough to
vote for someone and then HOPE they bring about the progressive
change we want? We must force their hands every day of our lives.

And here is the three part plan we propose from this point on:

1) Citizen Ballot Initiative Movements

The brightest spot of last night's election was some very good law
was made by citizen initiative across the country. Two states
legalized gay marriage, three legalized marijuana, etc. This is the
best form of "self-government" (to quote President Obama). We need to
get to work right now preparing ballot initiatives for the next
election cycle, educating voters, recruiting support, for single
payer, public financing of elections, you name it, whatever we really
want.

We don't have to wait for some politician to do us a big favor and
actually do their job representing the interests of the people. We
can go to the people (ourselves) directly and make it law in many
states. And the added benefit is such measures will bring people to
the polls who will also support the candidates we'd really like
better in any case.

Please email us if you would like to participate in such actions and
let's get it together.

2) Citizen Drafted Legislation Seeking Sponsorship

The right wing has long had ALEC, a coordinating group dedicated to
writing bills expressly drafted to favor their corporate special
interests and pushing them on legislatures. We should be doing the
same with our greater numbers. Let us write the bills WE want, and
demand that our legislators sponsor them.

If they refuse to sponsor, let us publish that and recruit other
candidates who will. And if we start that process immediately, and
current legislators will not act, we can STILL put those same bills
up as citizen ballot initiatives state by state, and have a head
start on educating our fellow citizens that way.

Please email us if you would like to participate in these actions,
especially if you have experience drafting law at the legislative
level.

3) Enlightening Media Policy Action Projects

We need to find other creative ways to educate and advocate for
policy change.

That is why we put so much energy into producing a full length
feature dramatic film, "The Last War Crime," about the lies that took
to war in Iraq, false intelligence which could only be obtained by
torture. And we will put in real theaters near you just as soon as
enough of you are ready to get real about it. And that means we need
tens of thousands of you (speaking nationwide) to request tickets,
and we are still not there yet. Please check out the new closing
argument clip at

http://www.peaceteam.net/closing_argument2.php

If this video sample does not touch something inside you there is
nothing more we can do for you.

In the meantime we are fighting back hard against the repressive
forces trying to stop the word from getting out about this movie.
Monday our lawsuit for political speech discrimination against right
wing radio station WMAL was filed in federal district court in
Washington, DC. This is a very serious action raising constitutional
questions of probable first impression. Check out this link to hear
the ad they rejected, and you can also read a draft of the complaint
from a link on the same page.

http://www.peaceteam.net/extraordinary_vacation.php

We are especially interested in hearing from qualified parties NOW
who would like to submit amicus briefs in this case. This has a
chance to make real precedent in a great test case.

And we want you to know, we can't wait to get back into production
for our next movie planned, to be called "Citizens United", in which
we will confront the issue of corporate personhood. But first, we
need to get this first one out there.

So those are our proposals for how to proceed going forward. Please
join in now in every possible way, and we will not have to bite our
nails again so hard two or four years hence.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.
Contributions to The People's Email Network are not tax-deductible
for federal income tax purposes.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function
at http://www.usalone.net/out.htm

usalone479b:24080

ANS -- Democrats VS. Republicans By the Numbers

Americans must prefer the economy to be bad, since they keep voting in Republicans (or Republiguns, as I have been calling them since the Sandy Hook Massacre).  Here are the numbers:
Found this on Facebook, but the sources are listed on it.
--Kim


Ok - so let's do this by the numbers...




Tuesday, May 14, 2013

ANS -- Time to Abolish Left vs. Right

This has a couple of interesting ideas in it.  Especially the last paragraph. The title is more of a minor idea. It's about politics, and The People versus Corporatists. 
Find it here:  http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/17422-time-to-abolish-left-vs-right   
--Kim




Corporate slaves. (photo: Peoples Voice.org)  
Corporate slaves. (photo: Peoples Voice.org)

go to original article


Time to Abolish Left vs. Right

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

14 May 13

 

[] eeping our nation divided is an agenda supported by both Fox News and MSNBC. The media and the politicians both profit from Americans believing they should hate their fellow Americans. And oddly enough, the one thing that unites the traditional "right" and "left" in this country is our hatred for those same media organizations and politicians that make money by regularly lying to us. The best way to beat them is to find the things that bring us together in one common purpose and unite around that.

An article in the Atlantic last week talked about how the dominant liberal narrative is broken. The argument that government is inherently good and is necessary to provide things like Social Security, Medicare and national parks has some truth to it, and worked well for both parties in the mid-twentieth century. Democrats and Republicans from FDR to Eisenhower won landslide elections using the good-government narrative. But now that our government is captive to corporations and their lobbyists like the US Chamber of Commerce, Americans of all ideological leanings are united in the belief that our current government, as it stands, is completely out of touch and needs radical change from outside the political system to do it.

In this video Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, talks about how he had a surprisingly pleasant conversation with several of the co-founders of MoveOn.org about crony capitalism. It was an incredibly populist speech about how they found themselves in complete agreement that big moneyed special interests have taken government hostage and have wasted billions of tax dollars on bailing out banks (like the Federal Reserve's $16 trillion in bailouts to both US and foreign banks that went entirely under the media's radar). He also talked about how it's more profitable for the crony capitalist DC bubble and the media they control to keep us divided than it is for us to play into those forced divisions.

Another Tea Party founder lamented about how the raw populist energy that originally inspired the Tea Party back in early 2008 against the Bush administration's bailouts of the biggest banks has been overtaken by Republican ideologues like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. Karl Denninger, a financial blogger who runs MarketTicker.com, said the Tea Party's original message was against the big banks. After Obama's inauguration, there was anger over appointees like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers, who were the same bought-and-paid-for financiers who deregulated the banks during Clinton's second term and brought about the beginning of the financial collapse. Denninger supported the Occupy Wall Street movement early on, saying it was picking up where the Tea Party left off before it was hijacked by the Republican Party.

Democrats and Republicans are using issues like gun control, Benghazi and gay marriage to continue feeding the illusion that there's a difference between the two and to continue the flow of money to their corporate masters. Whenever a politician says "gun control," gun sales go through the roof. When the ruckus over Chick-Fil-A's disapproval of marriage equality became mainstream conversation, social conservatives formed lines that went around the entire block to make their political statement about marriage equality. After their much ado about nothing Benghazi hearings, GOP members of Congress are fundraising off of their witch hunt. In either instance, whenever you follow the money trail, gun manufacturers and allegedly gay-hating fast food restaurants made record sales and politicians raised more money. Money is the entire point.

When it comes to Republican and Democratic Party officials' deference to corporate money, they're both nearly identical. The GOP-controlled House is pressing Obama hard to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would endanger an entire region's drinking water supply and create a negligible amount of temporary jobs. Harry Reid's Senate voted overwhelmingly for a resolution supporting the pipeline in their budget. The Monsanto Protection Act, which was written by GOP Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri and Monsanto officials, quietly became law with the signature of a Democrat president after the approval of a Democrat-led Senate.

Both parties are captive to the for-profit war industry – the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about – and are united in their support for military intervention whenever and wherever possible. Our last Republican president waged wars in two countries without being attacked by either one. Our current Democratic president has extended one of those wars by another ten years and used drones to take military action in several other countries. Even Rand Paul, who made a name for himself filibustering Obama's drone czar to lead the CIA, has made statements supporting drones to be used on Americans. Even though traditional Republicans are united against wasteful government spending, and traditional Democrats are united against austerity policies, both parties can agree that there's entirely too much wasteful spending in Washington when it comes to an imperial military force with a bloated budget currently occupying over 130 nations with 900 bases around the world, and the multibillion-dollar security and surveillance state used to monitor peaceful protesters instead of terrorists. We can certainly find agreement that it would be much more productive to stop spending money on the dysfunctional F-35 jet, which even John McCain has criticized, than make cuts to early childhood education programs like Head Start.

Americans should be smarter than to allow ourselves to get thrown into the counter-productive left vs. right fight hyped by the corporate-owned media and our corporate-owned politicians. If we're going to fight a binary struggle, it should be populist vs. corporatist. That's the only real division in this country right now. Are you on the people's side, or on big money's side?


Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

ANS -- Global Warming: Halfway to a Mass Extinction Event?

Here is a good article summarizing what we know about global warming at this moment.  The comments are interesting too, but you'll have to follow the link to read them. 
Find it here:   http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/global-warming-halfway-to-a-mass-extinction-event.html#3iGZWGVe0y5TMOjc.01
--Kim


Share  

Monday, May 13, 2013



Global Warming: Halfway to a Mass Extinction Event?

By Gaius Pubius, a professional writer living on the West Coast. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius. Cross posted from AmericaBlog

As you may
know, we've restarted our climate crisis writing here at La Maison, beginning with this piece, a global warming picture "from 10,000 feet":

The climate crisis in three easy charts

There we took the long view and noticed that the big temperature spike in the early days of the Cambrian, some 540 million years ago when life on earth was exploding in number and diversity of species, is a match for the temperature spike we could very well see in 2100 under the "do nothing" carbon scenario. The Cambrian temperature spikes reached 7°C (12.5°F) above pre-industrial (pre-1800) norms, which is also where we could be headed if we don't stop.

We also saw that the entire period of time from the Cambrian (again, about 540 million years ago) until now is divided into just three geologic eras, or major divisions …

The Paleozoic Era ­ the era of life before the Age of Dinosaurs, 540–250 million years ago
The Mesozoic Era ­ the Age of Dinosaurs, 250–65 million years ago
The Cenozoic Era ­ the Age of Mammals, which we're now in

… and that each of the first two eras ended in a major mass extinction event. Will a mass extinction end the Cenozoic Era, the Age of Mammals? If we hit a warm enough temperature, yes. This piece explains why and looks at the broad consequences for man under a couple of warming scenarios.

What Does "Major Mass Extinction" Mean?

In order to discuss global warming and mass extinction, we need to look at mass extinctions in general to get a sense of the scale of these events and their effect.

Consider again the chart of extinctions since the Cambrian, 540 million years ago. (This chart was presented in slightly different form here.) The labels across the top ­ "Cm" and so on ­ are geologic "periods". For your convenience I've added the larger divisions, the three geologic eras as well, and indicated where the current geologic period, the Quarternary, fits in.

Mass_Extinction_500px-Extinction_intensity.svg_4_marked-up

"Extinction intensity" on the Y axis measures only marine extinctions. That's for apples-to-apples comparison across the chart. Land plants evolved roughly 475 million years ago, and amphibians roughly 375 million years ago. "Extinction intensity" doesn't measure all species extinct, just countable ones based on the fossil record, but it's still an excellent measure for showing the relative scale of these disasters.

As you can see, only a handful of mass extinctions grew to real size. The biggest one by far is between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras ­ at the Permian-Triassic boundary ("P" and "Tr" above). That extinction is called the Great Dying, since over 90% of all marine species and 70% of land vertebrate species died out. It not only ended the Permian, it ended the whole Paleozoic Era.

There's another major extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary ("K" and "Pg" above) in which half of all species went extinct. That extinction ended the Mesozoic era, the Age of Dinosaurs.

Look at the chart again and locate the most recent extinction, the one that ended the dinosaurs. That spike killed off 50% of all species. There aren't many spikes of that intensity on the chart. If James Hansen is right (see below), we're about to create another one, a 25–50% species-extinction event. Will it end the so-called Age of Mammals? That depends on the effect of temperature on extinctions, and also the temperature the earth finally heats to before warming levels off.

Let's start with temperature and extinctions.

What Temperature Increase Will Trigger the Next Mass Extinction?

This is a key question ­ what warming increase will trigger an extinction of the scale of those on the chart?

We know that global warming will cause some crises, since the little warming we've experienced so far (0.8°C or so) is already a problem. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific organization studying this phenomenon, this is only the beginning. What's the temperature we should stop at if we don't want to cause another world-class extinction?

We also want to know the effect of these increased temperatures on man. As we showed in this post, the transition of homo sapiens from 200,000 years of hunter-gatherer life to what we call "civilization," which occurred 12,000 years ago, coincides exactly with the stabilization of global temperature to its current narrow range.

To see that dramatically, look at the chart below. I presented an unmodified version here; the version below has been enhanced with names of relevant geologic eras and periods, and also information about the appearance of human species, including our own. (To see this chart full size, click the image. To see the full-size unmodified original, click here; it's large and interesting.)

Earth_tem_All_palaeotemps_mark-up

First at the left, notice the large orange temperature spikes. The biggest one, at the extreme left, reaches 7°C (or 12.5°F) above the Y axis zero mark, the post-civilization, pre-industrial "norm."

Then look almost all the way to the right, at the 12,000-years-ago mark. That's the start of the Holocene, "today" in geologic time. In the Holocene, Earth comes out of its last ice age and global temperatures stabilize, going from about 1°C below the pre-industrial norm to almost flat, holding roughly in the range ±0.5°C. (To zoom in on just the Holocene temperatures, from 12,000 years ago until now, click here. The black line in both charts, this one and the Holocene chart, shows the average of eight regional temperature records.)

The flattening of global temperature in the last 12,000 years is remarkable. It also coincides exactly with civilized man, man emerging from hunter-gatherer status. It would be nice to keep the earth in that range, right?

Which brings us to James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and a lead American researcher in this field. He's been working on the problems of global warming and climate crisis since the 1980s (our discussion of Hansen's earlier work is here.)

Hansen recently published a paper called Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice (pdf), then authored several op-ed columns based on its conclusions. He has the temperature number we're looking for, the global warming increase that leads to a sizable mass extinction event. In his conclusion, he says (my emphasis and paragraphing):

Although species migrate to stay within climate zones in which they can survive, continued climate shift at the rate of the past three decades is expected to take an enormous toll on planetary life.
If global warming approaches 3°C by the end of the century, it is estimated that 21-52% of the species on Earth will be committed to extinction (3). Fortunately, scenarios are also possible in which such large warming is avoided by placing a rising price on carbon emissions that moves the world to a clean energy future fast enough to limit further global warming to several tenths of a degree Celsius (29). Such a scenario is needed if we are to preserve life as we know it.

See the paper itself for the references. Footnote (3) refers to Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, volume 1 of the IPCC Assessment Report 4, the most recent. You can read sections or download the PDF here.

Hansen's follow-up op-ed in the New York Times was just as stark (again, my emphasis and some paragraphing):

Game Over for the Climate
… Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.
That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet's species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

What Hansen is saying is what our chart above also says ­ that global warming of 3°C (or 5.5°F) hasn't been seen since the early Cenozoic, millions of years before the dawn of man. He also says 3°C ­ whenever it arrives ­ is the mass extinction point, potentially the start of a new geologic era.

Why Staying Below 3°C Global Warming Matters

We need to keep James Hansen's number in mind for two reasons. The first is that even if we stop global warming at "just" 3°C, it's a disaster. Imagine living in a world in which the earth is so warm that 20–50% of species are going extinct. Imagine the chaos, the death from disease, starvation and war, the global population migrations. Now imagine that this all happens in the next 90 years. The compression is stunning.

And we're halfway there if you count the warming that's in the pipeline and inevitable ­ the warming that's unavoidable as ice sheets continue to melt, summer arctic ice shrinks to nothing, summer oceans absorb the sun's rays instead of reflecting it, and permafrost releases its frozen-for-millenia methane.

There's no stopping a certain degree of roughness we've already made for ourselves ­ global warming is at 0.8°C now and headed inevitably for 1.5°C. There's a great deal of consensus around that number as the minimum that's inevitable. This is why world "leaders" want to stop at 2°C; they know stopping at any lower number is a lost cause. In fact, if there's disagreement at all among the unbought professionals in this field, it's that some scientists now think our chance of keeping global temperatures below 2°C is already unlikely. Who will be proven right? I don't know, but every time I look at the headlines, things are happening faster than anyone expected.

So the first bottom line for today is this. If you accept that …

1. Scientists are cautious and conservative in their estimates by nature
2. Events have been moving faster than predicted
3. This is one disaster no one should be tempted to flirt with

… we'd be foolish not to heed Hansen's warning. A 3°C warmer world by 2100 would be hell to manage.

Eventually we might be able to set up enclaves near the arctic circle and preserve something that looks like civilization ­ some farming, some energy production, some manufacturing ­ but what are the human population numbers at that point, and what does the coming century look like during that transition? It won't be a world anyone wants to live in.

Yes, a 3°C warmer world would be a challenge to say the least. But there's a second bottom line for today that's even more stark, and presents an even stronger reason to put on the carbon brakes now.

If We Go to 3°C Warmer, We May Go All the Way to 7°C

For a reason I'll discuss next time, if global warming is man-made ­ and few unbought scientists think otherwise ­ then 3°C warming may well be just the halfway point to the full disaster. By that I mean, because of the way the socio-political process works, the "never stop burning carbon" scenario could easily take us right past 3°C to a 7°C (12.5°F) warmer world ­ in the worst case, by 2100.

That's double the compression of Hansen's 3°C scenario ­ 3°C warmer by the mid-2050s and 7°C warmer by the end of the century. The discussion of that outcome is also in the IPCC literature, the same literature Hansen used to make his mass-extinction prediction. This is their absolute worst-case scenario. It's not a prediction, but it's one of the possibilities. Yikes.

For a look at times when the earth was as hot as 7°C above pre-industrial norms, you have to look at the Mesozoic Era and earlier (again, see the chart above). In a 7°C warmer world, I'm not sure we're even a species. I'm not sure what it would take to exist in the arctic, much less live in a "civilized" way.

I'll expand that consideration next time. But the short-form is this: If mankind's carbon is the big driver in the warming process, then the process doesn't stop until man does. Man will stop spewing carbon (a) by intention, (b) by most of us going pre-industrial, or (c) by drastically reducing our numbers, perhaps to zero. When one of those three things is true, all of the warming after-effects in the pipeline will play out, and global temperature will level off. Not before.

Will that level-off point be after 2°C? 3°C? 7°C? Stopping at 2°C will take intention. The others imply an out-of-control process. We'll look that aspect shortly. This is however your second bottom line for today. It's entirely possible that when 3°C warming is present, 7°C is in the pipeline. If a 3°C warmer world doesn't mark a new geologic era, a 7°C warmer world certainly will. Man as a species might survive a transition to the first. We won't survive a transition to the second.

Why Consider These Scenarios?

I'm writing this series for just one reason ­ we can put ourselves on a different path whenever we want to. But we have to want to. I'm trying to help us want to. So if you're feeling some panic right now, good. When enough of us feel that panic, we're halfway home. We just have to " hug the monster" and act.

In addition, world-wide resistance is coming, and that's a good thing. We still have some time ­ I'll lay out some what-happens-when scenarios in a bit ­ and the will to act can only get stronger. This isn't hopeless. It's just very important.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius

Monday, May 13, 2013

ANS -- Global Warming: Halfway to a Mass Extinction Event?

Here is a good article summarizing what we know about global warming at this moment.  The comments are interesting too, but you'll have to follow the link to read them. 
Find it here:   http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/global-warming-halfway-to-a-mass-extinction-event.html#3iGZWGVe0y5TMOjc.01  
--Kim


Share  

Monday, May 13, 2013


Global Warming: Halfway to a Mass Extinction Event?

By Gaius Pubius, a professional writer living on the West Coast. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius. Cross posted from AmericaBlog

As you may
know, we've restarted our climate crisis writing here at La Maison, beginning with this piece, a global warming picture "from 10,000 feet":

The climate crisis in three easy charts

There we took the long view and noticed that the big temperature spike in the early days of the Cambrian, some 540 million years ago when life on earth was exploding in number and diversity of species, is a match for the temperature spike we could very well see in 2100 under the "do nothing" carbon scenario. The Cambrian temperature spikes reached 7°C (12.5°F) above pre-industrial (pre-1800) norms, which is also where we could be headed if we don't stop.

We also saw that the entire period of time from the Cambrian (again, about 540 million years ago) until now is divided into just three geologic eras, or major divisions …

The Paleozoic Era ­ the era of life before the Age of Dinosaurs, 540–250 million years ago
The Mesozoic Era ­ the Age of Dinosaurs, 250–65 million years ago
The Cenozoic Era ­ the Age of Mammals, which we're now in

… and that each of the first two eras ended in a major mass extinction event. Will a mass extinction end the Cenozoic Era, the Age of Mammals? If we hit a warm enough temperature, yes. This piece explains why and looks at the broad consequences for man under a couple of warming scenarios.

What Does "Major Mass Extinction" Mean?

In order to discuss global warming and mass extinction, we need to look at mass extinctions in general to get a sense of the scale of these events and their effect.

Consider again the chart of extinctions since the Cambrian, 540 million years ago. (This chart was presented in slightly different form here.) The labels across the top ­ "Cm" and so on ­ are geologic "periods". For your convenience I've added the larger divisions, the three geologic eras as well, and indicated where the current geologic period, the Quarternary, fits in.

Mass_Extinction_500px-Extinction_intensity.svg_4_marked-up

"Extinction intensity" on the Y axis measures only marine extinctions. That's for apples-to-apples comparison across the chart. Land plants evolved roughly 475 million years ago, and amphibians roughly 375 million years ago. "Extinction intensity" doesn't measure all species extinct, just countable ones based on the fossil record, but it's still an excellent measure for showing the relative scale of these disasters.

As you can see, only a handful of mass extinctions grew to real size. The biggest one by far is between the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras ­ at the Permian-Triassic boundary ("P" and "Tr" above). That extinction is called the Great Dying, since over 90% of all marine species and 70% of land vertebrate species died out. It not only ended the Permian, it ended the whole Paleozoic Era.

There's another major extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary ("K" and "Pg" above) in which half of all species went extinct. That extinction ended the Mesozoic era, the Age of Dinosaurs.

Look at the chart again and locate the most recent extinction, the one that ended the dinosaurs. That spike killed off 50% of all species. There aren't many spikes of that intensity on the chart. If James Hansen is right (see below), we're about to create another one, a 25–50% species-extinction event. Will it end the so-called Age of Mammals? That depends on the effect of temperature on extinctions, and also the temperature the earth finally heats to before warming levels off.

Let's start with temperature and extinctions.

What Temperature Increase Will Trigger the Next Mass Extinction?

This is a key question ­ what warming increase will trigger an extinction of the scale of those on the chart?

We know that global warming will cause some crises, since the little warming we've experienced so far (0.8°C or so) is already a problem. But according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific organization studying this phenomenon, this is only the beginning. What's the temperature we should stop at if we don't want to cause another world-class extinction?

We also want to know the effect of these increased temperatures on man. As we showed in this post, the transition of homo sapiens from 200,000 years of hunter-gatherer life to what we call "civilization," which occurred 12,000 years ago, coincides exactly with the stabilization of global temperature to its current narrow range.

To see that dramatically, look at the chart below. I presented an unmodified version here; the version below has been enhanced with names of relevant geologic eras and periods, and also information about the appearance of human species, including our own. (To see this chart full size, click the image. To see the full-size unmodified original, click here; it's large and interesting.)

Earth_tem_All_palaeotemps_mark-up

First at the left, notice the large orange temperature spikes. The biggest one, at the extreme left, reaches 7°C (or 12.5°F) above the Y axis zero mark, the post-civilization, pre-industrial "norm."

Then look almost all the way to the right, at the 12,000-years-ago mark. That's the start of the Holocene, "today" in geologic time. In the Holocene, Earth comes out of its last ice age and global temperatures stabilize, going from about 1°C below the pre-industrial norm to almost flat, holding roughly in the range ±0.5°C. (To zoom in on just the Holocene temperatures, from 12,000 years ago until now, click here. The black line in both charts, this one and the Holocene chart, shows the average of eight regional temperature records.)

The flattening of global temperature in the last 12,000 years is remarkable. It also coincides exactly with civilized man, man emerging from hunter-gatherer status. It would be nice to keep the earth in that range, right?

Which brings us to James Hansen, head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and a lead American researcher in this field. He's been working on the problems of global warming and climate crisis since the 1980s (our discussion of Hansen's earlier work is here.)

Hansen recently published a paper called Perceptions of Climate Change: The New Climate Dice (pdf), then authored several op-ed columns based on its conclusions. He has the temperature number we're looking for, the global warming increase that leads to a sizable mass extinction event. In his conclusion, he says (my emphasis and paragraphing):

Although species migrate to stay within climate zones in which they can survive, continued climate shift at the rate of the past three decades is expected to take an enormous toll on planetary life.

If global warming approaches 3°C by the end of the century, it is estimated that 21-52% of the species on Earth will be committed to extinction (3). Fortunately, scenarios are also possible in which such large warming is avoided by placing a rising price on carbon emissions that moves the world to a clean energy future fast enough to limit further global warming to several tenths of a degree Celsius (29). Such a scenario is needed if we are to preserve life as we know it.

See the paper itself for the references. Footnote (3) refers to Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, volume 1 of the IPCC Assessment Report 4, the most recent. You can read sections or download the PDF here.

Hansen's follow-up op-ed in the New York Times was just as stark (again, my emphasis and some paragraphing):

Game Over for the Climate

… Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.

That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet's species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

What Hansen is saying is what our chart above also says ­ that global warming of 3°C (or 5.5°F) hasn't been seen since the early Cenozoic, millions of years before the dawn of man. He also says 3°C ­ whenever it arrives ­ is the mass extinction point, potentially the start of a new geologic era.

Why Staying Below 3°C Global Warming Matters

We need to keep James Hansen's number in mind for two reasons. The first is that even if we stop global warming at "just" 3°C, it's a disaster. Imagine living in a world in which the earth is so warm that 20–50% of species are going extinct. Imagine the chaos, the death from disease, starvation and war, the global population migrations. Now imagine that this all happens in the next 90 years. The compression is stunning.

And we're halfway there if you count the warming that's in the pipeline and inevitable ­ the warming that's unavoidable as ice sheets continue to melt, summer arctic ice shrinks to nothing, summer oceans absorb the sun's rays instead of reflecting it, and permafrost releases its frozen-for-millenia methane.

There's no stopping a certain degree of roughness we've already made for ourselves ­ global warming is at 0.8°C now and headed inevitably for 1.5°C. There's a great deal of consensus around that number as the minimum that's inevitable. This is why world "leaders" want to stop at 2°C; they know stopping at any lower number is a lost cause. In fact, if there's disagreement at all among the unbought professionals in this field, it's that some scientists now think our chance of keeping global temperatures below 2°C is already unlikely. Who will be proven right? I don't know, but every time I look at the headlines, things are happening faster than anyone expected.

So the first bottom line for today is this. If you accept that …

1. Scientists are cautious and conservative in their estimates by nature
2. Events have been moving faster than predicted
3. This is one disaster no one should be tempted to flirt with

… we'd be foolish not to heed Hansen's warning. A 3°C warmer world by 2100 would be hell to manage.

Eventually we might be able to set up enclaves near the arctic circle and preserve something that looks like civilization ­ some farming, some energy production, some manufacturing ­ but what are the human population numbers at that point, and what does the coming century look like during that transition? It won't be a world anyone wants to live in.

Yes, a 3°C warmer world would be a challenge to say the least. But there's a second bottom line for today that's even more stark, and presents an even stronger reason to put on the carbon brakes now.

If We Go to 3°C Warmer, We May Go All the Way to 7°C

For a reason I'll discuss next time, if global warming is man-made ­ and few unbought scientists think otherwise ­ then 3°C warming may well be just the halfway point to the full disaster. By that I mean, because of the way the socio-political process works, the "never stop burning carbon" scenario could easily take us right past 3°C to a 7°C (12.5°F) warmer world ­ in the worst case, by 2100.

That's double the compression of Hansen's 3°C scenario ­ 3°C warmer by the mid-2050s and 7°C warmer by the end of the century. The discussion of that outcome is also in the IPCC literature, the same literature Hansen used to make his mass-extinction prediction. This is their absolute worst-case scenario. It's not a prediction, but it's one of the possibilities. Yikes.

For a look at times when the earth was as hot as 7°C above pre-industrial norms, you have to look at the Mesozoic Era and earlier (again, see the chart above). In a 7°C warmer world, I'm not sure we're even a species. I'm not sure what it would take to exist in the arctic, much less live in a "civilized" way.

I'll expand that consideration next time. But the short-form is this: If mankind's carbon is the big driver in the warming process, then the process doesn't stop until man does. Man will stop spewing carbon (a) by intention, (b) by most of us going pre-industrial, or (c) by drastically reducing our numbers, perhaps to zero. When one of those three things is true, all of the warming after-effects in the pipeline will play out, and global temperature will level off. Not before.

Will that level-off point be after 2°C? 3°C? 7°C? Stopping at 2°C will take intention. The others imply an out-of-control process. We'll look that aspect shortly. This is however your second bottom line for today. It's entirely possible that when 3°C warming is present, 7°C is in the pipeline. If a 3°C warmer world doesn't mark a new geologic era, a 7°C warmer world certainly will. Man as a species might survive a transition to the first. We won't survive a transition to the second.

Why Consider These Scenarios?

I'm writing this series for just one reason ­ we can put ourselves on a different path whenever we want to. But we have to want to. I'm trying to help us want to. So if you're feeling some panic right now, good. When enough of us feel that panic, we're halfway home. We just have to " hug the monster" and act.

In addition, world-wide resistance is coming, and that's a good thing. We still have some time ­ I'll lay out some what-happens-when scenarios in a bit ­ and the will to act can only get stronger. This isn't hopeless. It's just very important.

GP

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