A.C.-C.U. III - UPDATE, IT GETS WORSE [and] CAN ANYTHING BE DONE?

What are they to do? The major multi-national privately-owned oil companies have been funding "researchers" aimed at sowing confusion about the reality of global climate change due to the CO2 emissions from our fossil-fuel based economy. And fighting hard to prevent any significant governmental initiatives, in this or other countries, to limit emissions.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/19

In spite of amplifying trends in things such as major floods, droughts, and wildfires. I thought this picture was particularly worth sharing, as it's imagery is very powerful. This is from the 150,000 acre Station Fire just north of Los Angeles, last sunday, 30 AUG 09. Temperatures in the inland areas of Southern California have been over 100F for the past two weeks, leading to this spectacular fire behaviour, a fire plume crowned by a "pyrocumulus" These only develop when fires are burning every bit of fuel on the ground (crown-fires) in an intense conflagration, which is unstoppable by any form of suppression attempt. And, there has been very little wind. God help them around that fire if a Santa Ana wind event were to develop on it! Get used to scenes like this, there will be alot more of them in the coming years, and in places not necessarily used to it.

Unfortunately for our beloved oil companies, who experienced record profits over the past four years, (Exxon posted the greatest quarterly profits of any corporation in history last year!), reality has a way of intruding upon even the best set and funded of plans. This reality though is not just bad for the oil companies, but something that will affect us all, in very detrimental ways, unless rapid, concerted, global action is taken to limit CO2 and Methane emissions, as well as to stop tropical deforestation for unsustainable livestock ranches and biofuels plantations.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/03

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/31-9

Published on Monday, August 31, 2009 by Associated Press

Climate Trouble May Be Bubbling Up in Far North

MACKENZIE RIVER DELTA, Northwest Territories — Only a squawk from a sandhill crane broke the Arctic silence — and a low gurgle of bubbles, a watery whisper of trouble repeated in countless spots around the polar world.

"On a calm day, you can see 20 or more `seeps' out across this lake," said Canadian researcher Rob Bowen, sidling his small rubber boat up beside one of them. A tossed match would have set it ablaze.

"It's essentially pure methane."
Pure methane, gas bubbling up from underwater vents, escaping into northern skies, adds to the global-warming gases accumulating in the atmosphere. And pure methane escaping in the massive amounts known to be locked in the Arctic permafrost and seabed would spell a climate catastrophe.
Is such an unlocking under way?

Researchers say air temperatures here in northwest Canada, in Siberia and elsewhere in the Arctic have risen more than 2.5 C (4.5 F) since 1970 — much faster than the global average. The summer thaw is reaching deeper into frozen soil, at a rate of 4 centimeters (1.5 inches) a year, and a further 7 C (13 F) temperature rise is possible this century, says the authoritative, U.N.-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

In 2007, air monitors detected a rise in methane concentrations in the atmosphere, apparently from far northern sources. Russian researchers in Siberia expressed alarm, warning of a potential surge in the powerful greenhouse gas, additional warming of several degrees, and unpredictable consequences for Earth's climate.

Others say massive seeps of methane might take centuries. But the Russian scenario is disturbing enough to have led six U.S. national laboratories last year to launch a joint investigation of rapid methane release. And IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri in July asked his scientific network to focus on "abrupt, irreversible climate change" from thawing permafrost.
The data will come from teams like one led by Scott Dallimore, who with Bowen and others pitched tents here on the remote, boggy fringe of North America, 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) from the North Pole, to learn more about seeps in the 25,000 lakes of this vast river delta.
A "puzzle," Dallimore calls it.

"Many factors are poorly studied, so we're really doing frontier science here," the Geological Survey of Canada scientist said. "There is a very large storehouse of greenhouse gases within the permafrost, and if that storehouse of greenhouse gases is fluxing to the surface, that's important to know. And it's important to know if that flux will change with time."

Permafrost, tundra soil frozen year-round and covering almost one-fifth of Earth's land surface, runs anywhere from 50 to 600 meters (160 to 2,000 feet) deep in this region. Entombed in that freezer is carbon — plant and animal matter accumulated through millennia.

As the soil thaws, these ancient deposits finally decompose, attacked by microbes, producing carbon dioxide and — if in water — methane. Both are greenhouse gases, but methane is many times more powerful in warming the atmosphere.

Researchers led by the University of Florida's Ted Schuur last year calculated that the top 3 meters (10 feet) of permafrost alone contain more carbon than is currently in the atmosphere.
"It's safe to say the surface permafrost, 3 to 5 meters, is at risk of thawing in the next 100 years," Schuur said by telephone from an Alaska research site. "It can't stay intact."

Methane also is present in another form, as hydrates — ice-like formations deep underground and under the seabed in which methane molecules are trapped within crystals of frozen water. If warmed, the methane will escape.

Dallimore, who has long researched hydrates as energy sources, believes a breakdown of such huge undersea formations may have produced conical "hills" found offshore in the Beaufort Sea bed, some of them 40 meters (more than 100 feet) high.

With underwater robots, he detected methane gas leaking from these seabed features, which resemble the strange hills ashore here that the Inuvialuit, or Eskimos, call "pingos." And because the coastal plain is subsiding and seas are rising from warming, more permafrost is being inundated, exposed to water warmer than the air.

The methane seeps that the Canadians were studying in the Mackenzie Delta, amid grassy islands, steel-gray lakes and summertime temperatures well above freezing, are saucer-like indentations just 10 meters (30 feet) or so down on the lake bed.

The ultimate source of that gas — hydrates, decomposition or older natural gas deposits — is unclear, but Dallimore's immediate goal is quantifying the known emissions and finding the unknown.

With tent-like, instrument-laden enclosures they positioned over two seeps, each several meters (yards) wide, the researchers have determined they are emitting methane at a rate of up to 0.6 cubic meters (almost 1 cubic yard) per minute.

Dallimore's team is also monitoring the seeps with underwater listening devices, to assess whether seasonal change — warming — affects the emissions rate.

Even if the lake seeps are centuries old, Bowen said, the question is, "Will they be accelerated by recent changes?"

A second question: Are more seeps developing?

To begin answering that, Dallimore is working with German and Canadian specialists in aerial surveying, teams that will fly over swaths of Arctic terrain to detect methane "hot spots" via spectrometric imagery, instruments identifying chemicals by their signatures on the light spectrum.

Research crews are hard at work elsewhere, too, to get a handle on this possible planetary threat.

"I and others are trying to take field observations and get it scaled up to global models," said Alaska researcher Schuur. From some 400 boreholes drilled deep into the tundra worldwide, "we see historic warming of permafrost. Much of it is now around 2 below zero (28 F)," Schuur said.

A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft is overflying Alaska this summer with instruments sampling the air for methane and carbon dioxide. In parts of Alaska, scientists believe the number of "thermokarst" lakes — formed when terrain collapses over thawing permafrost and fills with meltwater — may have doubled in the past three decades. Those lakes then expand, thawing more permafrost on their edges, exposing more carbon.

Off Norway's Arctic archipelago of Svalbard last September, British scientists reported finding 250 methane plumes rising from the shallow seabed. They're probably old, scientists said, but only further research can assess whether they're stable. In March, Norwegian officials did say methane levels had risen on Svalbard.

Afloat above the huge, shallow continental shelf north of Siberia, Russian researchers have detected seabed "methane chimneys" sending gas bubbling up to the surface, possibly from hydrates.

Reporting to the European Geophysical Union last year, the scientists, affiliated with the University of Alaska and the Russian Academy of Sciences, cited "extreme" saturation of methane in surface waters and in the air above. They said up to 10 percent of the undersea permafrost area had melted, and it was "highly possible" that this would open the way to abrupt release of an estimated 50 billion tons of methane.

Depending on how much dissolved in the sea, that might multiply methane in the atmosphere several-fold, boosting temperatures enough to cause "catastrophic greenhouse warming," as the Russians called it. It would be self-perpetuating, melting more permafrost, emitting more methane.

Some might label that alarmism. And Stockholm University researcher Orjan Gustafsson, a partner in the Russians' field work, acknowledged that "the scientific community is quite split on how fast the permafrost can thaw."

But there's no doubt the north contains enough potential methane and carbon dioxide to cause abrupt climate change, Gustafsson said by telephone from Sweden.

Canada's pre-eminent permafrost expert, Chris Burn, has trekked to lonely locations in these high latitudes for almost three decades, meticulously chronicling the changes in the tundra.
On a stopover at the Aurora Research Institute in the Mackenzie Delta town of Inuvik, the Carleton University scientist agreed "we need many, many more field observations." But his teams have found the frozen ground warming down to about 80 meters, and he believes the world is courting disaster in failing to curb warming by curbing greenhouse emissions.

"If we lost just 1 percent of the carbon in permafrost today, we'd be close to a year's contributions from industrial sources," he said. "I don't think policymakers have woken up to this. It's not in their risk assessments."

How likely is a major release?
"I don't think it's a case of likelihood," he said. "I think we are playing with fire."
Copyright 2009 Associated Press

So folks, there you have it. As you know, methane is 22 times more efficient of a greenhouse gas than CO2. Uncontrolled vast releases of it from our melting Arctic permafrost and undersea hydrate deposits will create rapid warming of a scale that could lead to melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and around the coastal margins of Antarctica. Which would create rapid sea-level rises of 20-40 feet in a decade. Not only would low-lying coastal countries like Bangladesh be inundated, but so would all the global industrial infra-structure for energy and food distribution. What kind of global effects would that have? I'm sure you can think of some pretty apocalyptic scenarios, many people have. How long do we have, before this occurs, if nothing is done? 10 to 20 years, at best.

Can anything be done, in the next 10 to 20 years, or sooner? Yes. Here are some promising ideas, which if implemented rapidly, globally, along with conservation measures, would buy us needed time, to transition to a low-carbon industrial base.

http://www.physorg.com/news170664833.html

Forests of Artificial Trees Could Slow Global Warming

August 28th, 2009 by Lin Edwards

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study on how technology could help to regulate climate change has studied hundreds of ideas, and selected three considered practical and able to be implemented quickly. The report's authors propose the construction of forests of artificial trees and installing tubes of algae on the sides of buildings to absorb carbon dioxide. They also proposed painting the roofs of buildings white to keep the Earth cool by reducing the amount of solar radiation absorbed.

The engineers from Britain's Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) have asked their government for an investment of 10 million pounds (around 16.3 million dollars) in these ideas to counter the threat to Britain posed by global warming.

One of the authors of the report, Dr Tim Fox, said geo-engineering techniques could buy us a few extra years' breathing space while we transition to a low-carbon world, and may help ward off the climate change scenarios we fear. The report claimed global temperatures could rise by as much as 6°C in the next 90 years if we don't act soon, and the results would include major refugee movements as well as food and water shortages.

One proposal was the building of forests of artificial trees. Each synthetic tree could capture up to 10 tons of CO2 a day, which is thousands of times more than a real tree. Each tree would cost around $24,400, and a forest of 100,000 of them could be constructed within the next couple of decades using existing technologies. A forest that size would be able to remove 60% of the UK's total CO2 emissions. Globally, forests of five to ten million trees could absorb all the CO2 from sources other than power plants.

The trees would have a special synthetic filter that absorbs carbon dioxide. When the filters had absorbed their load of CO2 they would be replaced with new filters and the old ones would be stored in empty gas and oil reservoirs, such as depleted oil wells in the North Sea. The trees are already at the prototype stage and their design is well-advanced. The prototype is the size of an average shipping container.

Another proposal put forward by the study was to install transparent tubes filled with algae on the outside of buildings. The "algae based photobioreactors", as they call them, would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and could later be turned into charcoal, which could then be buried to trap the carbon dioxide.

The third idea proposed by the IME was to paint city roofs white to reflect sunlight back into space and prevent it warming the Earth. Cities can be up to 4°C hotter than suburban areas, and reflective roofs could reduce the need for cooling and save up to 60% of a building's energy use.

Dr Fox warned that geo-engineering ideas such as those proposed are not a silver bullet that will solve all the problems, and they would need to be used in conjunction with other measures such as reducing our emissions and adapting to changes in the climate.
More information: Read the full Institution of Mechanical Engineers report
© 2009 PhysOrg.com

Another important thing that can be done is for governments World-wide to fund focused research into developing fuels from algae cultures. It has already been demonstrated that certain types of algae when grown in concentrated "farms" will produce an oil that can be easily refined into diesel and even kerosene for jet engines. In fact, an Air New Zealand 767 took a test flight this year using a 50-50 mix of this algae-based fuel and conventional kerosene. If enough research/development funding could be given, "carbon-neutral" transportation fuel could be mass-produced on a scale to displace the bulk of what is currently extracted from fossil fuels.

OK, we know what needs to be done, and how urgently and quickly. But how to pay for it? The US government is running huge deficits, in the trillions of dollars. How can it undertake large scale projects, similar to the NASA space program in the 1960s, to mass-produce and deploy artificial tree systems, sponsor energy conservation programs, design and deploy things like the building algae systems, and crash-develop alternative energy/fuel resources?

Well, this article by Shamus Cooke, in yesterday's Counterpunch web-site, gave some very good ideas: http://counterpunch.org/cooke09022009.html

"Make no mistake, the corporate elite want the U.S. deficit taken care of and they don’t want to pay higher taxes to do it. They rightfully fear that foreign investors — most notably China and Japan — will quit feeding the American debt machine unless the deficit is drastically reduced.
Instead of making workers pay off the deficit, the corporate elite should be forced to. A plan of action to accomplish this might look something like this:

1) Pass REAL health reform: nationalized, single-payer health care without the insurance companies, eliminate the Medicare windfall profits for the pharmaceutical companies by operating these companies as public utilities and have the government set affordable prices for all medications. Over the years, this will save billions of dollars.

2) Pass the Employee Free Choice Act: unionized workers make more money, and will thus pay more in taxes to help reduce the deficit.

3) A massive jobs creation program: masses of unemployed workers cost the government billions of dollars in unemployment benefits. Creating living-wage jobs while rebuilding the U.S. failing infrastructure is a very logical alternative.

4) Tax the rich: The top tax bracket should pay what they paid pre-Reagan, which was 70 percent of their income. (If necessary, tax them what they paid under Truman, which was 91 percent.)

5) End the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

6) Drastically reduce the military budget.

7) No more bailouts: Make public all the bailout spending, and make all those who received money return it. If the banks cannot pay back the money, take over their assets, i.e., nationalize them.

8) Require that the rich pay the same percentage of their salary into Social Security as the rest of us. This involves removing a cap on salaries over $102,000 which eliminates payment into Social Security on salaries over that amount."

The savings from implementing policies like this could easily pay for the necessary measures to reduce CO2 and methane emissions, as well as gradually start to bring the federal budget back toward the black. Unfortunately, as long as the corporate media, defense, and fossil fuel/transportation industries maintain control of our legislators, these ideas are totally utopian.

Another consideration is the extreme militarism of the U.S. How many millions of barrels of oil a year go to support all the military operations this country undertakes? And how much of a contribution is this to the total global CO2 emissions? Just ending the illegal, immoral, and corporate-profit driven wars the US is involved in, and reducing it's global military footprint, will also help in the fight to prevent runaway warming from developing. Can we do it?

Cheers.

ARCTIC CLIMATE CHANGE UPDATE III - Bad News and [Good News?]

Your lead editor here at the Alaska Progressive Review is on the long-term M.S. plan for a forestry degree from the University of Alaska. My thesis project involves using climate change modeling to estimate changes in Interior Alaska fire season severity over the next 5 to 8 decades. In addition, during my 22 years of operational weather forecasting experience as a meteorologist throughout the northwestern lower 48 and Alaska, I have witnessed many changes in weather patterns and occurrences, which I feel are highly significant. Things such as stronger high pressure ridging episodes, throughout the year, and less frequent winter deep-cold spells here in the sub-Arctic, and consequently, fewer and weaker "Arctic outbreaks" of this cold air transported south into the northern tier of the lower 48.

The University of Alaska is on the forefront of global warming/climate change research, as the Arctic regions are experiencing some of the most rapid changes on the planet (the other most rapidly changing place is the northerly reaches of Antarctica). http://amap.no/acia/

Thus, we here at A.P.R. feel it is imperative to share the latest state of the science information regarding our changing climate and atmospheric/oceanic systems. Because rapid action is urgently necessary to limit CO2 and methane emissions from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, before so-called "positive-feedback" processes overwhelm the climate system and initiate runaway warming processes. The results of which would be greatly disastrous for all on our planet. BAD NEWS.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/apr/26/featuresreviews.guardianreview16ardianreview16
You might remember seeing some graphs like these, if you saw The Inconvenient Truth, the movie Al Gore, our ex-2000 president (if there had been a real election), helped to make. We here at A.P.R. viewed this movie as extremely important in documenting the climate change problem, and felt it was an accurate depiction of the state of the science.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

The figure to the right is from the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, and shows the expected changes in CO2 concentrations, and resultant warming, by 2100. As you can see, barring any significant reductions in current emissions (which seems likely, unfortunately), average temperature increases in the Arctic of 6C or more are likely by 2100. Which follows exactly the trend of concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Which is what this figure shows. The concentration of CO2 over the past 1000 years (measured from bubbles of air in glacier ice cores world-wide) has varied little until around 1900. And likewise global mean temperatures (reconstructed from a variety of sources, glacial ice, tree-ring analysis, etc..) have varied little, until after 1900. And the trend of increasing temperature matches exactly, that of the increasing CO2 concentration.

With all that in mind, what has been happening, and is happening, here in Alaska, with global warming?

Well, let's take a look at a few things.

This image shows the total change in mean annual temperatures throughout Alaska since 1949. Note how significant changes of 2.5F to 5.0F have occurred across the entire state.











http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/ClimTrends/Change/TempChange.html

Even more interesting is the seasonal breakdown of these increases. Note how most areas have experienced the greatest warming in the winter season (Fairbanks and the interior, 7 to 9F increases!). Now, that has made it easier living here, fewer days of deep cold, for example (the -30F or colder ones especially). But this comes at a price. Permafrost thawing is also occuring as a result, which has and will even more greatly affect roads and infrastructure. In addition, thawing permafrost releases more CO2 and methane, a "positive feedback".

How is this warming manifesting here in Alaska? One thing we are seeing, are increasing frequencies of stronger high pressure ridging, throughout the year. High pressure ridging refers to the flow patterns in the jet stream, the meandering generally westerly overall atmospheric circulation between the subtropics and the polar regions, that transports heat poleward, and cold equator-ward, to maintain an overall temperature balance. High pressure ridging is when warmer air in the Northern Hemisphere moves northward in the jet stream, forming a "ridge" in the circulation pattern, which is just a bubble, or large mass, of warm air. Above average temperatures occur with a ridge pattern, and usually dry weather, though in summer, on it's edges, sometimes enough moisture and instability will be present to generate thunderstorms (and thus, start more fires!). One other thing to mention as well, about stronger, and more persistent high pressure ridging patterns is this. Up and downstream from a high pressure ridge, there are low pressure troughs. If an area is under a low pressure trough, blocked from moving by a strong ridge, a spell of very wet weather can occur. In the right circumstances, this will lead to stronger storms and increased flooding episodes.

An excellent example of this occurred at the end of April this year here in Alaska and Northwest Canada, and was the subject of our "Year Without a Spring?" post. This strong high pressure ridge, which built north from the subtropics, brought temperatures in the 70sF to interior Alaska abruptly at the end of April, after just an average slowly thawing month, with snowpacks and river ice just gradually thinning, as is usually the case. The rapid warmth sent a surge of snowmelt into the waterways of the region, and the thick river ice began moving and jamming, causing extensive flooding. Many villages along the Yukon river experienced major damage from this occurrence, and are hectically trying to rebuild, before the still harsh sub-arctic winter sets in.
http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/05/year-without-spring.html

Then, there are our fire seasons. So far, since 2004, we have burned approximately 15 million acres in interior Alaska, 3 million this summer. This is about 14 percent of the 110 million burnable acres in the region. You can see the trend in our wildfire acreages since 1955, around 1986 or so, a trend toward higher seasonal accumulations more frequently began, which has also been seen in Western Canada and the Western Lower 48.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/24-6
This article, at the above website, describes the increasing fire trends in Canada and Siberia, so unfortunately, this trend, another positive feedback mechanism, is occurring globally. Greece is experiencing wildfire emergencies currently.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8217433.stm

And, the tragic Australian fires last February, which caused 173 fatalities (the worst natural disaster in that country's history), were the subject of our first "Warning Lights Are Flashing" post.
http://akprogressive.blogspot.com/2009/03/warning-lights-are-flashing-australia.html

Here are the perimeters of the 2009 fires in Interior Alaska. I worked on the very largest one, southwest of Fairbanks, the Railbelt Complex, forecasting weather for the suppression team this past July, for two weeks, when it was "only" 150,000 to 350,000 acres. It eventually grew to over 600,000.

What caused this large fire season of 3 million acres? And the emergencies in Greece and Australia, and our record 2004/2005 fire seasons?

Anomalously strong and persistent high pressure ridging.

High pressure ridging covered Alaska and Northwest Canada from late June through the entire month of July. Fairbanks had it's driest July ever, since records began in 1904 (and driest summer month ever!), with only .06.

Fairbanks also picked up it's first day over 90F since 1994 this summer, when the temperature reached 91F on 08 July. And, as you can see from this figure, most of the days of the month had above average high and low temperatures.

So there you have it. The warming climate in the Arctic is occurring because stronger, more frequent, and more persistent high pressure ridging episodes are transporting greater amounts of heat northward. Since we've only warmed 1-2C over the past 60 years, another 4-6C of warming would therefore mean a strong amplification of this high pressure ridging pattern occurrence. Meaning, stronger more frequent warm spells, and all the ramifications thereof.

Here are some articles detailing changes occurring for the Arctic as a whole, which are very interesting and alarming.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/28/climate-change-poles

Climate change hitting entire Arctic ecosystem, says report

Extensive climate change is now affecting every form of life in the Arctic, according to a major new assessment by international polar scientists.

In the past four years, air temperatures have increased, sea ice has declined sharply, surface waters in the Arctic ocean have warmed and permafrost is in some areas rapidly thawing.
In addition, says the report released today at a Norwegian government seminar, plants and trees are growing more vigorously, snow cover is decreasing 1-2% a year and glaciers are shrinking.

Scientists from Norway, Canada, Russia and the US contributed to the Arctic monitoring and assessment programme (Amap) study, which says new factors such as "black carbon" – soot – ozone and methane may now be contributing to global and arctic warming as much as carbon dioxide.

"Black carbon and ozone in particular have a strong seasonal pattern that makes their impacts particularly important in the Arctic," it says.

The report's main findings are:

Land
Permafrost is warming fast and at its margins thawing. Plants are growing more vigorously and densely. In northern Alaska, temperatures have been rising since the 1970s. In Russia, the tree line has advanced up hills and mountains at 10 metres a year. Nearly all glaciers are decreasing in mass, resulting in rising sea levels as the water drains to the ocean.

Summer sea ice
The most striking change in the Arctic in recent years has been the reduction in summer sea ice in 2007. This was 23% less than the previous record low of 5.6m sq kilometres in 2005, and 39% below the 1979-2000 average. New satellite data suggests the ice is much thinner than it used to be. For the first time in existing records, both the north-west and north-east passages were ice-free in summer 2008. However, the 2008 winter ice extent was near the year long-term average.

Greenland
The Greenland ice sheet has continued to melt in the past four years with summer temperatures consistently above the long-term average since the mid 1990s. In 2007, the area experiencing melt was 60% greater than in 1998. Melting lasted 20 days longer than usual at sea level and 53 days longer at 2-3,000m heights.

Warmer waters
In 2007, some ice-free areas were as much as 5C warmer than the long-term average. Arctic waters appear to have warmed as a result of the influx of warmer waters from the Pacific and Atlantic. The loss of reflective, white sea ice also means that more solar radiation is absorbed by the dark water, heating surface layers further.

Black carbon
Black carbon, or soot, is emitted from inefficient burning such as in diesel engines or from the burning of crops. It is warming the Arctic by creating a haze which absorbs sunlight, and it is also deposited on snow, darkening the surface and causing more sunlight to be absorbed.

Check out the image to the right. An Arctic sea ice image from 20 August, 1980, next to one from 20 August, 2009. Can you see the differences? They are very significant. Here is the lastest Arctic sea ice update from the National Snow and Ice Data center:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

ARCTIC SEA ICE UPDATE

"During the first half of August, Arctic ice extent declined more slowly than during the same period in 2007 and 2008. The slower decline is primarily due to a recent atmospheric circulation pattern, which transported ice toward the Siberian coast and discouraged export of ice out of the Arctic Ocean. It is now unlikely that 2009 will see a record low extent, but the minimum summer ice extent will still be much lower than the 1979 to 2000 average.

Overview of conditions

On August 17, Arctic sea ice extent was 6.26 million square kilometers (2.42 million square miles). This is 960,000 square kilometers (370,000 square miles) more ice than for the same day in 2007, and 1.37 million square kilometers (530,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average. On August 8, the 2009 extent decreased below the 1979 to 2000 average minimum annual extent, with a month of melt still remaining."

Unfortunately, the news keeps getting worse. Both the increasing wildfire acreage trends across the Northern Hemisphere, and this decreasing Arctic sea ice coverage are positive feedback mechanisms. The sea ice coverage because decreasing areas allow more heat to be absorbed by the water, which retains the heat longer, which delays freezing longer in the fall. The new ice over the winter freezes thinner, and melts off sooner the next year. And so on...

This next article though describes what we think is the most ominous finding to date. Because if methane clathrate deposits from the seafloor are really melting now and releasing methane gas into the ocean (and eventually into the atmosphere), runaway warming is nearly upon us. Methane is 22 times more efficient of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and rapid increases in its atmospheric concentration will rapidly amplify warming, warming ocean waters further, triggering more methane releases, etc.. There are no mechanisms known that could stop this, once it starts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8205864.stm

Methane seeps from Arctic sea-bed
By Judith Burns Science and environment reporter, BBC News

Methane bubbles observed by sonar, escape from sea-bed as temperatures rise
Scientists say they have evidence that the powerful greenhouse gas methane is escaping from the Arctic sea-bed.

Researchers say this could be evidence of a predicted positive feedback effect of climate change.
As temperatures rise, the sea-bed grows warmer and frozen water crystals in the sediment break down, allowing methane trapped inside them to escape.

The research team found that more than 250 plumes of methane bubbles are rising from the sea-bed off Norway.

The joint British and German research team detected the bubbles using a type of sonar normally used to search for shoals of fish. Once detected, the bubbles were sampled and tested for methane at a range of depths.

Writing in Geophysical Research Letters, the team says the methane was rising from an area of sea-bed off West Spitsbergen, from depths between 150m and 400m.

The gas is normally trapped as "methane hydrate" in sediment under the ocean floor.
METHANE HYDRATES

Methane gas is trapped inside a crystal structure of water-ice
The gas is released when the ice melts, normally at 0C
At higher pressure, ie under the ocean, hydrates are stable at higher temperatures
"Methane hydrate" is an ice-like substance composed of water and methane which is stable under conditions of high pressure and low temperature.

As temperatures rise, the hydrate breaks down. So this new evidence shows that methane is stable at water depths greater than 400m off Spitsbergen.

However, data collected over 30 years shows it was then stable at water depths as shallow as 360m.

Ocean has warmed

Temperature records show that this area of the ocean has warmed by 1C during the same period.

The research was carried out as part of the International Polar Year Initiative, funded by Britain's Natural Environment Research Council (Nerc).

The team says this is the first time that this loss of stability associated with temperature rise has been observed during the current geological period.

Professor Tim Minshull of the National Oceanography Centre at Southampton told BBC News: "We already knew there was some methane hydrate in the ocean off Spitsbergen and that's an area where climate change is happening rather faster than just about anywhere else in the world."

1. Methane hydrate is stable below 400m
2. Nearer the surface the hydrate breaks down as temperatures rise and the methane is released
3. Gas rises from the sea-bed in plumes of bubbles - most of it dissolves before it reaches the surface
4. So far scientists haven't detected methane breaking the ocean surface - but they don't rule out the possibility

"There's been an idea for a long time that if the oceans warm, methane might be released from hydrate beneath the sea floor and generate a positive greenhouse effect.

"What we're trying to do is to use lots of different techniques to assess whether this was something that was likely to happen in a relatively short time scale off Spitsbergen."

However, methane is already released from ocean floor hydrates at higher temperatures and lower pressures - so the team also suggests that some methane release may have been going on in this area since the last ice age.

Significant discovery

Their most significant finding is that climate change means the gas is being released from more and deeper areas of the Arctic Ocean.

Professor Minshull said: "Our survey was designed to work out how much methane might be released by future ocean warming; we did not expect to discover such strong evidence that this process has already started."

"We were slightly surprised that if there was so much methane rising why no one had seen it before. But I think the reason is that you have to be rather dedicated to spot it because these plumes are only perhaps 50m to 100m across.

"The device we were using is only switched on during biological cruises. It's not normally used on geophysical or oceanographic cruises like ours. And of course you've got to monitor it 24 hours a day. In fact, we only spotted the phenomenon half way through our cruise. We decided to go back and take a closer look."

The team found that most of the methane is being dissolved into the seawater and did not detect evidence of the gas breaking the surface of the ocean and getting into the atmosphere.

The researchers stress that this does not mean that the gas does not enter the atmosphere. They point out that the methane seeps are unpredictable and erratic in quantity, size and duration.

It is possible that larger seeps at different times and locations might in fact be vigorous enough to break through the ocean surface.

Most of the methane reacts with the oxygen in the water to form carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas. In sea water, this forms carbonic acid which adds to ocean acidification, with consequent problems for biodiversity.

Graham Westbrook, lead author and professor of geophysics at the University of Birmingham, said: "If this process becomes widespread along Arctic continental margins, tens of megatonnes of methane a year - equivalent to 5-10% of the total amount released globally by natural sources, could be released into the ocean."

The team is planning another expedition next year to observe the behaviour of the methane plumes over time. They are also engaged in ongoing research into the amount of methane hydrate under this area of the ocean floor.

Ultimately, they want to be able to predict how much might be vulnerable to temperature change and in what timescale.

As the next article shows, warming ocean waters are breaking records. Combined with the news from the previous article, describing the Arctic seafloor methane releases, we here at A.P.R. are very alarmed.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/20-13

Hot Water: World Sets Ocean Temperature Record
by Seth Borenstein

WASHINGTON — Steve Kramer spent an hour and a half swimming in the ocean Sunday — in Maine. The water temperature was 72 degrees — more like Ocean City, Md., this time of year. And Ocean City's water temp hit 88 degrees this week, toasty even by Miami Beach standards.
Kramer, 26, who lives in the seaside town of Scarborough, said it was the first time he's ever swam so long in Maine's coastal waters. "Usually, you're in five minutes and you're out," he said.
It's not just the ocean off the Northeast coast that is super-warm this summer. July was the hottest the world's oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping.

The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. June was only slightly cooler, while August could set another record, scientists say. The previous record was set in July 1998 during a powerful El Nino weather pattern.

Meteorologists said there's a combination of forces at work: A natural El Nino system just getting started on top of worsening man-made global warming, and a dash of random weather variations. The resulting ocean heat is already harming threatened coral reefs. It could also hasten the melting of Arctic sea ice and help hurricanes strengthen.

The Gulf of Mexico, where warm water fuels hurricanes, has temperatures dancing around 90. Most of the water in the Northern Hemisphere has been considerably warmer than normal. The Mediterranean is about three degrees warmer than normal. Higher temperatures rule in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The heat is most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 degrees above average. The tongues of warm water could help melt sea ice from below and even cause thawing of ice sheets on Greenland, said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado.

Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land, because water takes longer to heat up and does not cool off as easily as land.

"This warm water we're seeing doesn't just disappear next year; it'll be around for a long time," said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. It takes five times more energy to warm water than land.

The warmer water "affects weather on the land," Weaver said. "This is another yet really important indicator of the change that's occurring."

Georgia Institute of Technology atmospheric science professor Judith Curry said water is warming in more places than usual, something that has not been seen in more than 50 years.
Add to that an unusual weather pattern this summer where the warmest temperatures seem to be just over oceans, while slightly cooler air is concentrated over land, said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the climate data center.

The pattern is so unusual that he suggested meteorologists may want to study that pattern to see what's behind it.

The effects of that warm water are already being seen in coral reefs, said C. Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's coral reef watch. Long-term excessive heat bleaches colorful coral reefs white and sometimes kills them.
Bleaching has started to crop up in the Florida Keys, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands — much earlier than usual. Typically, bleaching occurs after weeks or months of prolonged high water temperatures. That usually means September or October in the Caribbean, said Eakin. He found bleaching in Guam Wednesday. It's too early to know if the coral will recover or die. Experts are "bracing for another bad year," he said.

The problems caused by the El Nino pattern are likely to get worse, the scientists say.
An El Nino occurs when part of the central Pacific warms up, which in turn changes weather patterns worldwide for many months. El Nino and its cooling flip side, La Nina, happen every few years.

During an El Nino, temperatures on water and land tend to rise in many places, leading to an increase in the overall global average temperature. An El Nino has other effects, too, including dampening Atlantic hurricane formation and increasing rainfall and mudslides in Southern California.

Warm water is a required fuel for hurricanes. What's happening in the oceans "will add extra juice to the hurricanes," Curry said.

Hurricane activity has been quiet for much of the summer, but that may change soon, she said. Hurricane Bill quickly became a major storm and the National Hurricane Center warned that warm waters are along the path of the hurricane for the next few days.
Hurricanes need specific air conditions, so warmer water alone does not necessarily mean more or bigger storms, said James Franklin, chief hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

[Good News ? ]

Our last article to present describes some findings from Greenland, which does on the face of it, seem like good news:
http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=981

FOR RELEASE ON Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:00 AM PDT

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Wetlands Likely Source of Methane from Ancient Warming Event

Analysis of Greenland ice led by Scripps researchers could allay fears about methane 'burp' accelerating current global warming trend

Scripps Institution of Oceanography / University of California, San Diego

An expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago, according to an international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.

Scripps Institution of Oceanography geoscientist Jeff Severinghaus extracts blocks of ice from an ice sheet in Greenland.

Severinghaus participated in an international analysis of methane trapped in the ice sheet to understand the origins of a sudden burst of atmospheric methane 11,600 years ago. Photo: Vas Petrenko, University of Colorado, Boulder

The finding is expected to come as a relief to scientists and climate watchers concerned that huge accelerations of global warming might have been touched off by methane melts in the past and could happen again now as the planet warms. By measuring the amount of carbon-14 isotopes in methane from air bubbles trapped in glacial ice, the researchers determined that the surge that took place nearly 12,000 years ago was more chemically consistent with an expansion of wetlands. Wetland regions, which produce large amounts of methane from bacterial breakdown of organic matter, are known to have spread during warming trends throughout history."This is good news for global warming because it suggests that methane clathrates do not respond to warming by releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere," said Vasilii Petrenko, a postdoctoral fellow at University of Colorado, Boulder, who led the analysis while a graduate student at Scripps.

The results appear in April 24 editions of the journal Science.

Scientists had long been concerned about the potential for present-day climate change to cause a thawing of Arctic permafrost and a warming of ocean waters great enough to trigger a huge release of methane that would send planetary warming into overdrive. Vast amounts of methane are sequestered in solid form, known as methane clathrate, in seafloor deposits and in permafrost. Cold temperatures and the intense pressure of the deep ocean stabilize the methane clathrate masses and keep methane from entering the atmosphere. Scientists have estimated that a melting of only 10 percent of the world's clathrate deposits would create a greenhouse effect equal to a tenfold increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

For comparison, the warming trend observed in the last century has taken place with only a 30 percent increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide.The research team, overseen by Scripps geoscientist and study co-author Jeff Severinghaus, collected what may be the largest ice samples ever for a climate change study. The researchers cut away 15 tons of ice from a site called Pakitsoq at the western margin of the Greenland ice sheet to collect the ancient air trapped within. Methane exists in low concentrations in this air and only a trillionth of any given amount contains the carbon-14 isotope that the researchers needed to perform the analysis. Levels of carbon-14, which has a half-life of 5,730 years, were too high in the methane to have come from clathrates, the researchers concluded.

Geoscientists Vas Petrenko and Jeff Severinghaus celebrated the acquisition of uncontaminated methane samples during field research at the Greenland ice sheet. The two helped determine that a burst of atmospheric methane 11,600 years ago was most likely caused by expansion of wetlands.

"This study is important because it confirms that wetlands and moisture availability change dramatically along with abrupt climate change," said Severinghaus. "This highlights in a general way the fact that the largest impacts of future climate change may be on water resources and drought, rather than temperature per se."The burst of methane took place immediately after an abrupt transition between climatic periods known as the Younger Dryas and Preboreal. During this event, temperatures in Greenland rose 10° C (18° F) in 20 years. Methane levels over 150 years rose about 50 percent, from 500 parts per billion in air to 750 parts per billion.

In addition to Petrenko and Severinghaus, researchers from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), Oregon State University, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, the Technical University of Denmark and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Australia contributed to the report. The work was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Chemical Society, the ANSTO Cosmogenic Climate Archives of the Southern Hemisphere project and the New Zealand Foundation of Science and Technology.

This may seem like good news, and possibly it is (let's hope so!). However, this article was written last April, based on research conducted a year previously. The article describing the Arctic seafloor methane releases just came out a few days ago. The researchers in Greenland from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography may not be aware of these latest findings. Massive surveying of the Arctic seafloor needs to be undertaken A.S.A.P., to ascertain if these methane releases are very widespread, and if they are increasing. As well as to measure how much, if any, is making it into the atmosphere.

Bad news all around. The industrialised nations are all dragging their feet about implementing any significant emission reduction plans, primarily due to extreme pressure from the fossil fuel and transportation industries. Who fund researchers and advertising campaigns to muddy the waters, so that the public and policy-makers will not feel that climate change is a pressing issue.

It now looks like it is too late to prevent extreme events such as sea level rises that will affect low-lying countries, droughts, and all the other effects of global warming (increasing wildfire severity, stronger tropical storms, increased flooding), SINCE THE POSITIVE FEEDBACK MECHANISMS ARE STARTING.

The only hope now is that once more people and politicians are directly affected, real attempts to solve the problem can be undertaken. Will it be too late?

Cheers.

MAKING OUT LIKE BANDITS

We can never understand the modern history of war in this country, without looking at who benefits. I strongly urge everyone to read a most amazing book, which we've talked about before. WAR IS A RACKET written in 1930 by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. He wrote this book after serving in the Marines for decades, and participating in many "expeditions" to countries in Latin America. He wrote about those experiences, and World War I, why they happened, and who benefited. His words, unfortunately, are just as true now, as they were then.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

Then of course, are these famous sayings from men who have participated in and experienced the full horrors of war.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953

"What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world." ~Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864

Our corporate media, and corporate-controlled President continues to report news from Iraq as if it was just an every-day, ordinary occurrence. And not the criminal, unprovoked act of aggression against a powerless country, whose crime it was to lie atop the World's second largest pool of sweet crude oil. Yet, this is coming at a great price to the US now, as our economy unravels due to the spiraling greed that the deregulated capitalism of the past 25 years has encouraged.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8206433.stm

And so it was that I came across this article today, and just had to share it with you. This is why the US is, and has been, nearly continuously at war overseas since 1898 (longer, if you count the theft of land from the Indigenous peoples of this continent).

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/17-9

Iraq War's Winners and Losers
by Sherwood Ross

"On my last day in Iraq," veteran McClatchy News correspondent Leila Fadel wrote August 9, "as on my first day in Iraq, I couldn't see what the United States and its allies had accomplished. ... I couldn't understand what thousands of American soldiers had died for and why hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed."

Quite a few oil company CEO's and "defense" industry executives, however, do have a pretty good idea why that war is being fought. As Michael Cherkasky, president of Kroll Inc., said a year after the Iraq invasion boosted his security firm's profits 231 percent: "It's the Gold Rush."
What follows is a brief look at some of the outfits that cashed in, and at the multitudes that got took.

"Defense Earnings Continue to Soar," Renae Merle wrote in The Washington Post on July 30, 2007. "Several of Washington's largest defense contractors said last week that they continue to benefit from a boom in spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan..."
Merle added, "Profit reports from Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin showed particularly strong results in operations in the region." More recently, Boeing's second-quarter earnings this year rose 17 percent, Associated Pressreported, in part because of what APcalled "robust defense sales."

But war, it turns out, is not only unhealthy for human beings, it is not uniformly good for the economy. Many sectors suffer, including non-defense employment, as a war can destroy more jobs than it creates.

While the makers of warplanes may be flying high, these are "Tough Times For Commercial Aerospace," Business Week reported July 13. "The sector is contending with the deepening global recession, declining air traffic, capacity cuts by airlines, and reduced availability of financing for aircraft purchases." The general public suffers, too.

"As President Bush tried to fight the war without increasing taxes, the Iraq war has displaced private investment and/or government expenditures, including investments in infrastructure, R&D and education: they are less than they would otherwise have been," write Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes in The Three Trillion Dollar War.

Stiglitz holds a Nobel Prize in economics and Bilmes is former assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce. They say government money spent in Iraq does not stimulate the economy in the way that the same amounts spent at home would.

The war has also starved countless firms for expansion bucks.
"Higher borrowing costs for business since the beginning of the Iraq war are bleeding manufacturing investment," Greg Palast wrote in Armed Madhouse. And when entrepreneurs -- who hire so many -- lack growth capital, job creation takes a real hit.

We might recall too, the millions around the world who filled the streets to protest President Bush's impending attack on Iraq and who have quit buying U.S. products, further reducing sales and employment.

"American firms, especially those that have become icons, like McDonald's and Coca-Cola, may also suffer, not so much from explicit boycotts as from a broader sense of dislike of all things American," Stiglitz and Bilmes wrote.

"America's standing in the world has never been lower," the authors said, noting that in 2007, U.S. "favorable" ratings plunged to 29 percent in Indonesia and nine percent in Turkey. "Large numbers of wealthy people in the Middle East - where the oil money and inequality put individual wealth in the billions - have shifted banking from America to elsewhere," they said.

Because the Iraq war crippled that country's oil industry, output fell, supplies tightened, and, according to Palast, "World prices leaped to reflect the shortfall."
What's more, Palast pointed out, after the Iraq invasion the Saudis withheld more than a million barrels of oil a day from the market. "The one-year 121 percent post-invasion jump in the price of crude, from under $30 a barrel to over $60, sucked that $120 billion windfall to the Saudis from SUV drivers and factory owners in the West," he said.
Count the Saudis among the big winners.

The oil spike subtracted 1.2 percent from the gross domestic product, "costing the USA just over one million jobs," Palast reckoned. Stiglitz and Bilmes said the oil price spike meant "American families have had to spend about 5 percent more of their income on gasoline and heating than before."
Last year, the Iraq and Afghan wars cost each American household $138 per month in taxes, they estimated. Count the Joneses among the big losers.

Palast wrote, "It has been a very good war for Big Oil - courtesy of OPEC price hikes. The five oil giants saw profits rise from $34 billion in 2002 to $81 billion in 2004...But this tsunami of black ink was nothing compared to the wave of $120 billion in profits to come in 2006: $15.6 billion for Conoco, $17.1 billion for Chevron and the Mother of All Earnings, Exxon's $39.5 billion in 2006 on sales of $378 billion."

Palast noted that oil firms have their own reserves whose value is tied to OPEC's price targets, and "The rise in the price of oil after the first three years of the war boosted the value of the reserves of ExxonMobil oil alone by just over $666 billion...

"Chevron Oil, where Condoleezza Rice had served as a director, gained a quarter trillion dollars in value...I calculate that the top five oil operators saw their reserves rise in value by over $2.363 trillion."

Who's surprised when Forbes reports of the ten most profitable corporations in the world five are now oil and gas companies - Exxon-Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Chevron, and Petro-China.
"Since the Iraq War began," Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive wrote, "aerospace and defense industry stocks have more than doubled. General Dynamics did even better than that. Its stock has tripled."

An Associated Pressaccount published July 23 observed: "With the military fighting two wars and Pentagon budgets on a steady upward rise, defense companies regularly posted huge gains in profits and rosier earnings forecasts during recent quarters. Even as the rest of the economy tumbled last fall, military contractors, with the federal government as their primary customer, were a relative safe haven."

Among the big winners are top Pentagon contractors, as ranked by WashingtonTechnology.com as of 2008. Halliburton spun off KBR in 2007 and their operations are covered later. Data was selected for typical years 2007-09.

Lockheed Martin, of Bethesda, Maryland, a major warplane builder, in 2007 alone earned profits of $3 billion on sales of nearly $42 billion.

Boeing, of Chicago, saw its 2007 net profit shoot up 84 percent to $4 billion, fed by "strong growth in defense earnings," according to an Agence France-Presse report.
KBR
Northrop Grumman, of Los Angeles, a manufacturer of bombers, warships and military electronics, had 2007 profits of $1.8 billion on sales of $32 billion.

General Dynamics, of Falls Church, Virginia, had profits in 2008 of about $2.5 billion on sales of $29 billion. It makes tanks, combat vehicles, and mission-critical information systems.
Raytheon, of Waltham, Massachusetts, reported about $23 billion in sales for 2008. It is the world's largest missile maker and Bloomberg News says it is benefiting from "higher domestic defense spending and U.S. arms exports."

Scientific International Applications Corp., of La Jolla, California, an engineering and technology supplier to the Pentagon, had sales of $10 billion for fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2009, and net income of $452 million.

L-3, of New York City, has enjoyed sales growth of about 25 percent a year recently. Its total 2008 sales of $15 billion brought it profits of nearly $900 million. Its primary customer is the Defense Department, to which it supplies high tech surveillance and reconnaissance systems.
EDS Corp., of Plano, Texas, purchased by Hewlett-Packard in May, 2008, had 2007 sales of nearly $20 billion. Its priority project is building the $12 billion Navy-Marine Corps Intranet, said to be the largest private network in the world.

Fluor Corp., of Irvine, Texas, an engineering and construction firm, had net earnings of $720 million in 2008 on sales of $22 billion.

The good times continue to roll for military contractors under President Obama, who has increased the Pentagon's budget by 4 percent to a total of about $700 billion. One reason military contractors fare so well is that no-bid contracts with built-in profit margins tumble out of the Pentagon cornucopia directly into their laps.

The element of "risk," so basic to capitalism, has been trampled by Pentagon purchasing agents even as its top brass rattle their missiles at supposedly enemy governments abroad. If this isn't enough, in 2004 the Bush administration slipped a special provision into tax legislation to cut the tax on war profits to 7 percent compared to 21 percent paid by most U.S. manufacturers.
Former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, according to author Pratap Chatterjee in his Halliburton's Army, raked in "more than $25 billion since the company won a ten-year contract in late 2001 to supply U.S. troops in combat situations around the world."

As all know, President Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney previously headed Halliburton (1995-2000) and landed in the White House the same year Halliburton got its humungous outsourcing contract. Earlier, as Defense Secretary, (1989-1993) Cheney sparked the revolutionary change to outsourcing military support services to the privateers. Today, Halliburton ranks among the biggest "defense" winners of all.

Halliburton's army "employs enough people to staff one hundred battalions, a total of more than 50,000 personnel who work for KBR, a contract that is now projected to reach $150 billion," Chatterjee wrote.
"Together with the workers who are rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure and the private security divisions of companies like Blackwater, Halliburton's Army now outnumber the uniformed soldiers on the ground in Iraq."
Accompanying Pentagon outsourcing, Chatterjee wrote, "is the potential for bribery, corruption, and fraud. Dozens of Halliburton/KBR workers and their subcontractors have already been arrested and charged, and several are already serving jail terms for stealing millions of dollars, notably from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait."
There's likely no better example of how Halliburton/KBR literally burned taxpayers' dollars than its destruction of $85,000 Mercedes and Volvo trucks when they got flat tires and were abandoned.
James Warren, a convoy truck driver testified to the Government Affairs Committee in July 2004, "KBR didn't seem to care what happened to its trucks...It was common to torch trucks that we abandoned...even though we all carried chains and could have towed them to be repaired."
Bunnatine Greenhouse, once top contract official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, made headlines by demanding old-fashioned free enterprise competitive bidding. She told a Senate committee in 2005: "I can unequivocally state the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper abuse I have witnessed" in 20 years of working on government contracts.
Greenhouse was demoted for her adherence to the law, Chatterjee said, but she became a cover girl at Fraud magazine and was honored by the Giraffe Society, a tribute to one Federal employee who stuck her neck out.

Tales of Halliburton/KBR's alleged swindles fill books. Rory Maybee, a former Halliburton/KBR contractor who worked at dining facilities in Camp Anaconda in 2004 told the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee "that the company often provided rotten food to the troops and often charged the army for 20 thousand meals a day when it was serving only ten thousand."
Food swindling, though, is small potatoes. Say Stiglitz and Bilmes: "KBR has also been implicated in a lucrative insurance scam that has gouged U.S. taxpayers for at least $600 million."
To fatten profit margins, contractors who cheat U.S. taxpayers apparently think nothing of underpaying their help.

"While the executives of KBR, Blackwater, and other firms are making profits, many of those performing the menial work, such as cooking, driving, cleaning, and laundry, are poorly paid nationals from India, Pakistan, and other Asian and African countries," Stiglitz and Bilmes wrote. "Indian cooks are reported to earn $3-$5 a day. At the same time, KBR bills the American taxpayer $100 per load of laundry."

Blackwater, the security firm repeatedly charged with shoot-first tactics, fraudulently obtained small-business set-aside contracts worth more than $144 million, the authors asserted.
According to Blackwater by Jeremy Scahill, the security firm in 2004 got a five-year contract to protect U.S. officials in Iraq totaling $229 million but as of June 2006, just two years into the contract, it had been paid $321 million, and by late 2007 it had been paid more than $750 million.
Scahill reported an audit charged that Blackwater included profit in its overhead and its total costs. The result was "not only in a duplication of profit but a pyramiding of profit since in effect Blackwater is applying profit to profit," Scahill wrote. "The audit also alleged that the company tried to inflate its profits by representing different Blackwater divisions as wholly separate companies."

"As of summer, 2007, there were more ‘private contractors' deployed on the U.S. government payroll in Iraq (180,000) than there were actual soldiers (160,000)," Scahill said. "These contractors worked for some 630 companies and drew personnel from more than 100 countries around the globe. ... This meant the U.S. military had actually become the junior partner in the coalition that occupies Iraq."

And each Blackwater operative was costing the American taxpayers $1,222 per day. The Defense Department remains, of course, America's No. 1 Employer, with 2.3 million workers (roughly twice the size of Wal-Mart, which has 1.2 million staffers) perhaps because America's biggest export is war.

"Who pays Halliburton and Bechtel?" philosopher Noam Chomsky asked rhetorically in his Imperial Ambitions. "The U.S. taxpayer," he answers.

"The same taxpayers fund the military-corporate system of weapons manufacturers and technology companies that bombed Iraq. So first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It's a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population."

It's also been a body blow to Iraq, killing an estimated one million inhabitants, forcing two million into exile and millions more out of their homes. Incredibly, the U.S. proposed to reconstruct the nation it invaded with their oil revenues - and then, after taking perhaps $8 billion left the job undone. (Since the U.S. kept no records of how the dough was dispensed, it is not possible to identify the recipients.)
As Stiglitz and Bilmes remind us, "The money spent on Iraq could have been spent on schools, roads, or research. These investments yield high returns."
In an article in the Aug. 24 Nation, policy analyst Georgia Levenson Keohane cites the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities to the effect that 48 states are reporting deficits totaling nearly $166 billion, projected to reach, cumulatively, $350 billion-$370 billion by 2011.
"Although many states have attempted tax increases, these are politically challenging and often insufficient to close the gaps. Consequently, statehouses have been forced to cut vital services at a time when the need for them is ever more desperate," Keohane wrote.

In the same issue, reporter Marc Cooper notes the poverty rate in Los Angeles county borders on 20 percent; that California's schools are ranked 47th nationally; that the state college system has suspended admissions for Spring 2010; that thousands of state workers are being laid off and/or forced to take furlough days; that unemployment has reached 12 percent; that state parks are being closed; that personal bankruptcies peaked last; that one in four "capsized mortgages in the U.S. is in California."

Plus, California's bond rating is just above the junk level and it faces a $26 billion budget shortfall.
California's woes need to be examined in the light of the $116 billion the National Priorities Project of Northampton, Massachusetts, says its taxpayers have shelled out for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001.

Those same dollars roughly would put four million California students through a four-year college. Bear in mind, too, outlays for those wars are but a fraction of all Pentagon spending, so the total military tax bill is far higher than $116 billion to California.

In calling for a reduction in military spending, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, said, "The math is compelling: if we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy....

"[American] well-being is far more endangered by a proposal for substantial reductions in Medicare, Social Security or other important domestic areas than it would be by canceling weapons systems that have no justification from any threat we are likely to face."

On the other hand, maybe Americans want to keep paying to operate 2,000 domestic and foreign military bases and spend more money on armies and weapons of death than all other nations combined. Maybe they like living in the greatest Warfare State the world has ever known.

My hunch, though, is a lot of Americans haven't connected the country's looming bankruptcy with the greedy, gang from the military-industrial complex out to control the planet, its people and its precious resources.

After the long-suffering civilian population of Iraq, whose crime was having oil - a country Steiglitz says that has been rendered virtually unlivable - the big losers are the American taxpayers who are bleeding income, jobs and quality of life, not just sacrificing family members, on behalf of a runaway war machine.

California's plight is being repeated everywhere. A great nation is being looted and millions of its citizens are being pauperized before our eyes.
© 2009 Consortium News

Sherwood Ross formerly worked for The Chicago Daily News and other major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for “worthy causes”. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Cheers.