China's "Cancer Villages"

Chinese officials are now admitting the existence of "cancer villages" in areas where pollution and environmental degradation have resulted in cancer rates far above normal.

According to Chinese business magazine Caijing, Chinese officials with the Ministry of Environment Protection confirmed the existence of cancer villages in a statement announcing plans to alleviate pollution and its harmful side effects.

“The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linking to water and air pollutions,” the Ministry announced. “There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions.”

Mainland China’s cancer rates have been surging since the 1990’s, becoming the nation’s biggest cause of death. In 2010, an investigative journalist and environmental activist, Deng Fei, posted a widely circulated map of China’s cancer villages. Deng Fei was able to map out over 100 cancer villages, covering 27 provinces. Research by other academics and news organizations suggests that a more realistic estimate would be upwards of 400.

Sequestration and the F-35. Kickin in China's Door.

Oh those Americans and their silly budget showdowns.   As some observers say, these confrontations have come to resemble kabuki theatre.

Sequestration is scheduled to take effect on March 1, a mere week away.   Budgets get cut about 10%.   The effects may not be terminal overall but some government projects could be hard hit.  The US Air Force is warning that means the F-35 programme might have to be restructured.

The entire Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter programme may have to be restructured if the Pentagon budget undergoes the full 10 year effects of sequestration.

Under the Congressional sequestration budgetary maneuver, the US Department of Defense's coffers would be automatically cut across the board by 10% every year for 10 years. That is on top of the $487 billion that has already been cut from the spending plan.

If the full sequestration were to take effect, "we're going to have to look completely at the [F-35] programme," US Air Force chief of staff Gen Mark Welsh told the Senate Armed Services Committee on 12 February. "It's going to be impossible to modernize."

What this would mean for America and her allies is that apparently we wouldn't be able to operate quite so well in "contested airspace", which essentially means Chinese airspace.   This is how General Welsh puts it:

"Our kick in the door capability would be impacted."

Did you get that?   Our capability to kick in China's door would be impacted.   And that's a bad thing.  With China already re-arming furiously we wouldn't be able to make them quite as fearful that we might launch pre-emptive war on them.

That's what the F-35 is, it's a light attack bomber, it creates a "kick in the door capability."   Now does Canada really need a kick in the door capability?  Do we need to prepare and equip ourselves to kick in China's door?  Really?

Let's carry this scenario through a little bit.   If we kick in China's door, what do we have in mind just in case China decides to respond in kind?   Since we're only going to have light attack bombers, what are we going to do if China gets really mad and decides to kick in our door?   We don't have diddly squat to protect ourselves.   Maybe the Americans would protect us, maybe not.

Here's the deal.   Canada has enough to worry about just defending Canada.  Big country, small population, small military budget.  We don't need to focus on exhausting our military purse on "kick in the door" technology.   That's just plain stupid.  It might appeal, a lot, to Sideshow Steve and Airshow MacKay but they're boneheads, complete idiots when it comes to shooting up stuff.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

It's one thing to waste a decade playing whack-a-mole against a gaggle of illiterate farmers wielding Korean war-vintage assault rifles.   It's quite another to sucker punch someone really big and powerful who would probably do what people who are sucker punched do.

Harper's Fundamentalist Fetish is Just Plain Wrong

It's this simple.   If you don't have money to maintain our Coast Guard stations and our fisheries monitors, you don't have money to squander on an Office of Religious Freedoms.

Sideshow Steve Harper's twisted, theocratic brain thinks depriving Canadians of their basic protections is a dandy cost-cutting measure especially when there's enough left over to fund a little religious dabbling on the taxpayers' tab.

Screw you, Steve.   Maybe if you had balanced the federal budget you could mount some barely arguable case for wasting tax dollars on your fundamentalist fetish.   You would still be wrong but at least you could argue the point.   But you're running deficits and telling us all that we're going to have to tighten our belts for austerity is coming down hard on us.   That's no time to be pissing federal money away on your or anyone else's silly religious superstitions.

U.S. States Jonesing for Drugs

Georgia is said to be rushing to put down condemned prisoners before its stock of execution drugs expires on March 1.   Georgia is just one of several states that find the supply of drugs needed for lethal injections drying up.   Some states are even said to be hitting the black market.

Georgia confirmed to the Guardian that its entire supply of pentobarbital expires on 1 March. The expiration date leaves the state in a quandary: it still has 93 men and one woman on death row, including Hill, but with no obvious means by which to execute them.


Anti-death penalty campaigners are scathing about the unseemly haste with which Georgia appears to rushing to beat the deadline. "This highlights the nastiness of the process that the AG should be racing to kill prisoners ahead of an expiration date," said Sara Totonchi, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

Georgia's difficulties procuring execution drugs is a reflection of the gradual stranglehold that is being put on the US death penalty by authorities and companies around the world refusing to act as accomplices in the death sentence. The European commission, following unilateral action by the UK, has imposed restrictions on the export of medicines to all US corrections departments.

As a result of the European squeeze, Hospira, the only US manufacturer of sodium thiopental, an anaesthetic that was used widely in the triple cocktail of lethal injections, ceased production in 2011. That, in turn, forced states including Georgia to revise their death protocols, shifting to a single injection of pentobarbital.

But now supplies of pentobarbital are also running out. One of the leading manufacturers of the drug, the Danish firm Lundbeck, has introduced tough restrictions on the distribution of the drug to prevent it falling into the hands of US executioners.

As legal routes for the procurement of medical drugs have been successively shut down, several of the 33 states that still practice the death penalty have resorted to shady methods for acquiring them. Georgia was exposed in 2011 as having been one of the states that bought lethal injection drugs from Dream Pharma, an unlicensed company that operated out of a driving school in west London.

Capitalism Exchanges Fire with France

Globalization has transferred a great deal of political power into corporate boardrooms.   And, for some businessmen, it's gone to their heads - guys like Maurice (Morry) "The Grizz" Taylor, CEO of U.S. tire company, Titan.

Morry was in France to check out a faltering tire plant he thought Titan might pick up.   When he was done, Taylor fired off a letter to French industry minister, Arnoud Mountebourg, telling him France could keep its "so called workers."


"The French workforce gets paid high wages but works only three hours. They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three," Taylor wrote on February 8 in the letter in English addressed to the minister, Arnaud Montebourg.


"How stupid do you think we are?" he asked at one point.

"Titan is going to buy a Chinese tire company or an Indian one, pay less than one Euro per hour wage and ship all the tires France  needs," he said. "You can keep the so-called workers."  


As the leaked letter drew outrage in France, Montebourg penned a scathing response, spelling out the reasons why France routinely ranks as a leading destination for companies to invest, beating China and India in mid-2012.

"Can I remind you that Titan, the business you run, is 20 times smaller than Michelin, the French (tire) technology leader with international influence, and 35 times less profitable," Montebourg wrote, in a two-page letter in French.

"This just shows the extent to which Titan could have learned and gained, enormously, from a presence in France."

Montebourg's letter, a copy of which was sent to Reuters, said Taylor's comments, "as extremist as they are insulting", illustrated his ignorance of France.

Biden At Bat

Veep Joe Biden is carrying the White House campaign to rein in assault rifles.   And, predictably, he's shooting straight.

He challenged the National Rifle Association's arguments opposing Barack Obama's plans, declaring: ''They say, 'Well, it's about our culture … The facts are, our culture's not killing 25 people a day. It's weapons and high-capacity magazines. It's criminals who get guns without going through a background check.

''We have to speak for those 20 beautiful children who died 69 days ago, 12 miles from here,'' Mr Biden added, saying he had met two Sandy Hook parents before taking the stage.
''I can't imagine how we will be judged as a society if we do nothing,'' he said. ''If you're concerned about your political survival, you should be concerned about the survival of our children. And guess what? I believe the price to be paid politically should go to those who refuse to act … The American people are with us.''

But the White House will have to overcome gun nut Republicans, especially the Tea Party variety, like Texas Republican Louie Gohmert.

"They want the elimination of firearms in America,'' Mr Gohmert said. ''Some of them have the idea that the second amendment was there to allow hunting. Not true. You know, it is for our protection and the founders' quotes make that very clear, including against a government that could run amuck,'' he told Freedom 107 radio.

''We've got some people who think sharia law ought to be the law of the land, forget the constitution. But the guns are there, the second amendment is there, to make sure all of the rest of the amendments are followed,'' the Tea Party-backed member of the House of Representatives said.

''I had somebody last week in Washington from either Georgia or Alabama was saying, 'Look, this goes back to we have got to have at least 50 rounds in our magazines because on average that's about how many it takes to bring down a drone.''

God Bless America, they're going to need it.

 

Hard Times Ahead For American Blacks?

 Could the United States Supreme Court open the door for rolling back decades of progress for America's black minority? 

When a black man won the White House in 2008, many in the commentariat declared the United States a "post-racial" society, no longer hamstrung by old hatreds, freed at last from the embarrassments of segregation – finally and triumphantly color blind.

Conservatives have been telling themselves some version of this pretty lie ever since Robert E Lee surrendered at Appomattox. On 27 February, we'll hear it again when the supreme court takes up a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The case, Shelby County v Holder, centers on Section 5 of the VRA, which requires that nine states with histories of discrimination (Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Alaska and Arizona), and parts of seven more states must seek permission from the justice department to change election laws. The Alabama county argues that Section 5 is an unconstitutional infringement on "state sovereignty", and a relic from the bygone days of poll taxes and literacy tests.

Granted, citizens in the old Confederacy are no longer forced to say how many bubbles are in a bar of soap before they can cast a ballot. But the last national election provides plenty of examples of voter suppression. Florida (five counties of which are included in Section 5) enacted a largely inaccurate purge of its electoral rolls. The people whose right to vote was challenged were predominantly (the state says coincidentally) minorities.

The state's Republican leadership cut back the number of polling places and reduced early voting, including the Sunday before election day, when African American churches would traditionally organize trips to the polls. Many, like Desaline Victor, the 102-year-old President Obama featured in his state of the union address, had to wait in line for hours. More than 200,000 others were unable to vote.

Texas and South Carolina (entirely covered by Section 5) tried to institute absurdly restrictive voter ID laws in 2012, but the Department of Justice, citing the Voting Rights Act, shot them down. "Federal courts sided with DOJ, finding that the new rules would disproportionately affect black and Latino citizens.
Should the supreme court strike down Section 5, Texas and South Carolina (and any other state with a legislature worried about too many of the wrong sort of voters) can come right back and try again. Perhaps that's why two weeks ago, the Virginia legislature decided that bank statements, utility bills, paycheck stubs and Social Security cards, all of which were specifically approved as valid voter ID just last year, will no longer be allowed. Concealed weapons permits, however, are perfectly acceptable.

...Jim Crow isn't dead: he's just hired a good PR firm, got lawyered up, and learned to call voter suppression "fraud prevention". Edward Blum of the Project on Fair Representation, calls the Voting Rights Act "a bill stuck in a Jim Crow-era time warp".

Sex Could Solve Roman Catholicism's Biggest Problems

The debate is open again as to whether Roman Catholic priests should have to be celibate.

Britain's top Catholic, Cardinal Keith O'Brien says the next Pope should re-open the issue of ecclesiastical celibacy.


Britain's most senior Catholic has suggested Catholic priests should be able to marry and have children, saying the demand for celibacy was not of "divine origin".

In one of the most significant breaks with Catholic orthodoxy, Cardinal Keith O'Brien said many priests found it "very difficult to cope" with the celibate life and suggested lifting that ban could soon happen in the wider church.

The cardinal suggested that the next pope could review the marriage ban for priests. Marriage is allowed in some cases within the church already. The English Catholic church has accepted married former Anglican priests, under a policy introduced in 2011 by the present pope, Benedict XVI.

In an interview with the BBC, he said there were some elements of Catholic teaching which were "basic dogmatic belief" – such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia. But the proscription against priest's marrying was not one of them.

"For example the celibacy of the clergy, whether priests should marry – Jesus didn't say that," O'Brien said. "There was a time when priests got married, and of course we know at the present time in some branches of the church – in some branches of the Catholic church – priests can get married, so that is obviously not of divine origin and it could get discussed again."

Cameron's Austerity Wins Britain a Credit Downgrade

It's not like Britain's Conservatives weren't warned their austerity platform would bludgeon their nation's economy.  Still, David Cameron didn't have to boast that keeping Britain's AAA credit rating intact would by the real test of his economic and political credibility.

Oopsie.

Britain's credit rating has now been dropped from AAA to Aa1 by the ratings agency, Moody's.   And the Tories, predictably, have vowed to stay the course since that seems to be working so well.

Chancellor George Osborne said the government would continue taking "tough measures" to deal with the deficit.

Mr Osborne said the decision was "a stark reminder of the debt problems facing our country" and did not mean the government should change course.

Duffy to Cough Up Cash

Harper senator (just add water and stir) Mike Duffy has said he'll repay the housing allowance he's been pocketing for living in Ottawa while "resident" in Prince Edward Island.

"What we've got here is a case where the rules aren't clear," Duffy offered by way of a blended excuse/apology.   He seems to think that resolves everything yet it might only make things worse - for him.

If Duffy is legitimately resident in Prince Edward Island then the money he's refunding is properly his, every dime of it.  It's only if Duffy isn't a resident of P.E.I. that he's taken money that he isn't supposed to have.  In fact, it's only if Duffy is resident in just one place in all of Canada, the Ottawa region itself, that he doesn't qualify for the out-of-town housing allowance.

But if Duffy is resident in Ottawa and isn't entitled to the housing allowance and therefore isn't resident in Prince Edward Island then he's not qualified to sit as a senator for Canada's smallest province.  Yes he owns a cottage in P.E.I..   The neighbours may never have seen him there but it is registered in his and his wife's names.  The Canadian constitution stipulates senators must own a residence in the province they represent.  Check.

Another sub-section of the Constitution Act stipulates that the senator must also be "resident" in the province they represent.  Resident as in actually living there.  And, if Duffy could demonstrate that he actually lived in P.E.I., he would be perfectly entitled to keep the Ottawa housing allowance he pocketed but is now refunding.

Ergo, giving the money back, is a tacit admission by Duffy that he cannot show himself to have been resident in Prince Edward Island by virtue of which he's not entitled to sit as a senator at all.  He should be handing back his housing allowance and, it could be argued, his pay, traveling allowances and other personal perks and benefits he's pocketed while impersonating a member of the Canadian Senate.

So, why did Duffy make this curious admission and cough up the housing allowance dough?   A skeptic could wonder if he's got more than making Canadian taxpayers whole on his mind.   Could it be that Mike is really worried about those declarations he signed where he claimed he was resident in P.E.I. that allowed him to pocket some 40-thousand plus dollars?   It could (and still might) be argued that he knew or ought to have known he wasn't a resident of Prince Edward Island when he declared himself to be just that so that he could pocket the housing allowance.  It could (and still might) be argued that is fraud.  A suspicious mind could conclude that giving the money back is a way of saying "no harm, no foul" on the impersonator's part.   After all, "the rules aren't clear" and Mr. Duffy "may have filled out a form incorrectly."  Just take it from Duffy.

He took it from you.

Global Musical Chairs

There's nothing like self-interest to shape one's perspective.

With the ascendancy of the emerging economies: - China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico and South Africa - those of us in the developed world face the prospect of possibly having to do with less as our rivals muscle us out of some markets that were once ours for the taking.   They've got money, they want to buy the stuff we want, they'll compete and we're going to have to pay more for somewhat less.

But imagine what the future holds for the have-nots.   They too are going to have to compete with the new wealth and as the rich, old and new, developed and emerging, drive up prices, the have-nots are going to be settling for scraps.

The land grabs underway in the Third World are a perfect example.  Even poor countries with chronic food shortages are seeing their best farmland snapped up by rich countries from Asia and the Middle East.   These same emerging economies are getting a lock on Third World resources too.   All those years while we were keeping Kabul safe from the Taliban, China quietly moved in to buy control of Afghanistan's substantial copper reserves.  More recently, China has locked up control of the southern port city of Gwadar in Pakistan's Baloch region.  What's next, an overland pipeline from Iran straight into China?

We're going to feel the pinch of this ascendant, new affluence but it's the Third World that will be the low-hanging fruit for easy picking.  The poor countries are already in the crosshairs of climate change, food insecurity and freshwater shortages.   Now they could be picked clean of what little remains.   Let the migrations begin.

Not Green, For Now

I had to resign my membership in the Green Party to do it, but now I'm a Liberal Supporter.   I didn't join the Liberal Party and I won't unless something radical happens but I registered as a Liberal Supporter in order to vote for Joyce Murray as party leader.

Murray is the only candidate who is remotely progressive.  She's the only one who isn't a bitumen booster.  She's the only candidate who has garnered the support of two people I truly respect - Lloyd Axworthy and David Suzuki.  She's a fellow British Columbian.

That said, I expect Trudeau will win and carry on the Liberals' moribund politics that saw the party go from Sussex Drive to Stornoway to Motel 6 out on the Gloucester Highway.   That's not to say that he won't be able to take down an already weakened Harper in 2015.  He might, but that wouldn't hold much promise for Canada.

Of the rest, the Space Cadet is probably my second choice with the Pipeline Queen, Hall Findlay, dead last.  The Sad Sacks in between?  Nah, I don't think so.

So, I'll keep my fingers crossed for Joyce Murray.   Stranger things have happened.

The Social Science of Climate Change

What does social science have to do with climate change?  Quite a bit, actually.   Climate change denialism has given social scientists rich pickings to scrutinize, pick apart and analyze. 

One finding they've reached is that the ranks of climate change denialists are heavily populated with conspiracy theorists.  It's a hoax, a conspiracy, you see, the whole theory of anthropogenic global warming.   And research that shows denialists = conspiracists, well that's a conspiracy too.

The strongest finding in the survey was that ideological belief in an unregulated free market tended to be a predictor of someone’s willingness to reject the findings of mainstream climate research. No great surprise there. It was the secondary findings that set off a brouhaha.

Dr. Lewandowsky’s survey results suggested that people who rejected climate science were more likely than other respondents to reject other scientific or official findings and buy into assorted fringe theories: that NASA faked the moon landing, that the Central Intelligence Agency killed Martin Luther King Jr., that the AIDS virus was unleashed by the government, and so forth.

This piece of research appeared in a specialized journal in psychological science, but it did not take long to find its way onto climate skeptics’ blogs, setting off howls of derision.

A theory quickly emerged: that believers in climate science had been the main people taking Dr. Lewandowsky’s survey, but instead of answering honestly, had decided en masse to impersonate climate contrarians, giving the craziest possible answers so as to make the contrarians look like whack jobs.

So, a paper about a tendency among this group to believe in conspiracy theories was met by … a conspiracy theory.

Then again, why would anyone have to go out of their way to make contrarians look like 'whack jobs'?   There's no need.   All the research that keeps flooding in, not just from climatologists, but from all the earth sciences - atmospherics, hydrology, biology, botany, oceanography, geology, chemistry, medicine, epidemiology, the lot - it all shows beyond any question that contrarians are whack jobs.

Always Wanted to Visit "The Big Easy"?

Many of us have at one time or another wanted to visit New Orleans, The Big Easy.  If you still want to go, you might want to go sooner rather than later.

Louisiana, you see, is experiencing a major problem with sea-level rise, far more than state officials expected.

Stunning new data not yet publicly released shows Louisiana losing its battle with rising seas much more quickly than even the most pessimistic studies have predicted to date.

While state officials continue to argue over restoration projects to save the state’s sinking, crumbling coast, top researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have concluded that Louisiana is in line for the highest rate of sea-level rise “on the planet.”

Indeed, the water is rising so fast that some coastal restoration projects could be obsolete before they are completed, the officials said.

When new data on the rate of coastal subsidence is married with updated projections of sea-level rise, the southeast corner of Louisiana looks likely to be under at least 4.3 feet of Gulf water by the end of the century.

That rate could swamp projects in the state’s current coastal Master Plan, which incorporated worst-case scenarios for relative sea-level rise calculated two years ago — which the new figures now make out-of-date.

Even heavily populated areas, such as New Orleans, appear to be sinking faster than expected, in fact even faster than some areas along the coast.

Southeast Louisiana — with an average elevation just 3 feet above sea level — has long been considered one of the landscapes most threatened by global warming. That’s because the delta it’s built on — starved of river sediment and sliced by canals — is sinking at the same time that oceans are rising. The combination of those two forces is called relative sea-level rise, and its impact can be dramatic.

It's a Trifecta - subsidence, coupled with sea level rise and then hit with hurricanes and storm surge.   After Hurricane Katrina some experts recommended that New Orleans simply be abandoned, surrendered to the sea and storms.   It's starting to look like they were right.  This guy probably still won't agree.

The Butcher's Price of the War on Drugs

Mexico's drug wars have been brutal.   Upwards of 70,000 have been killed, often brutally, usually near the U.S. border.

Now it's emerging that another 27,000 have simply disappeared.  

Combined with the 70,000 dead acknowledged recently by the new administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto, who succeeded Calderon on Dec. 1, the number of the disappeared makes the Calderon tenure the bloodiest period in Mexican history since the Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century.

On Thursday, human rights campaigners said the numbers place Mexico far above some of the better-known Latin American human catastrophes of decades past, including the rule of military regimes in Argentina, Chile and Brazil and civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Lia Limon, Mexico’s deputy interior secretary for human rights and legal affairs, acknowledged on Wednesday that the government had compiled a list of 27,000 missing people after meeting with representatives of the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Angel Osorio Chong on Thursday promised to “look for all of them.” But he also warned there were no guarantees. “We start from a fundamental fact,” he said, “little information, little evidence and no rules.”

We're not winning this war on drugs.  We're losing, badly, and tens of thousands of people are paying for it with their lives.   Hundreds of thousands more

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/21/183820/mexicos-war-on-crime-now-ranks.html#storylink=cpy

This Could Be a Smear, It Could Be a Conspiracy, or It Could Be a Clerical Tsunami - Gay Blackmail in the Vatican?

The Pope and the gay clergy scandal?

The Rome daily La Repubblica reports that Pope Benny's hasty departure from the Holy See could be linked to a network of gay prelates in the Vatican, some of whom were being blackmailed by outsiders.

The paper said the pope had taken the decision on 17 December that he was going to resign – the day he received a dossier compiled by three cardinals delegated to look into the so-called "Vatileaks" affair.

Last May Pope Benedict's butler, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested and charged with having stolen and leaked papal correspondence that depicted the Vatican as a seething hotbed of intrigue and infighting.
According to La Repubblica, the dossier comprising "two volumes of almost 300 pages – bound in red" had been consigned to a safe in the papal apartments and would be delivered to the pope's successor upon his election.

The newspaper said the cardinals described a number of factions, including one whose members were "united by sexual orientation".
In an apparent quotation from the report, La Repubblica said some Vatican officials had been subject to "external influence" from laymen with whom they had links of a "worldly nature". The paper said this was a clear reference to blackmail.

It quoted a source "very close to those who wrote [the cardinal's report]" as saying: "Everything revolves around the non-observance of the sixth and seventh commandments."

The seventh enjoins against theft. The sixth forbids adultery, but is linked in Catholic doctrine to the proscribing of homosexual acts.

La Repubblica said the cardinals' report identified a series of meeting places in and around Rome. They included a villa outside the Italian capital, a sauna in a Rome suburb, a beauty parlour in the centre, and a former university residence that was in use by a provincial Italian archbishop.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said: "Neither the cardinals' commission nor I will make comments to confirm or deny the things that are said about this matter. Let each one assume his or her own responsibilities. We shall not be following up on the observations that are made about this."

China's Water Woes

China does not seem able to come to grips with the pollution that is inexorably poisoning the country.   While Beijing talks about green energy, including 5th generation reactor technology, it brings online a new coal-fired power plant almost daily.  The country imports truly massive quantities of coal from the Pacific Rim, especially from Australia, with Canada getting its share also.  And China is eager to receive regular shipments of Athabasca bitumen to process through its own refineries.

Just how bad is it?  Last year it was reported that some 40% of the country's productive farmland is too contaminated from airborne heavy metals to be safe enough for food production.   And when your river looks like this, you've got a serious problem.

"Finally this issue [water pollution] has aroused the attention of the general public," said Ma Jun, head of the Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. "Although it's going to take a long time [to fix], now we have seen a starting point."

...the government announced on Thursday that it will force heavily polluting industries to participate in a compulsory insurance programme to ensure they can adequately provide compensation for damage.

The mining and smelting industries must participate in the scheme, along with lead battery manufacturers, leather goods firms and chemical factories. Petrochemical companies and firms that make hazardous chemicals and hazardous waste would also be encouraged to participate.

China's water pollution woes are not a new story. The head of China's ministry of water resources said last year that up to 40% of the country's rivers are "seriously polluted", and an official report from last summer found that up to 200 million rural Chinese have no access to clean drinking water.

China's lakes are often affected by pollution-induced algae blooms, causing the surface of the water to turn a bright iridescent green. Yet even greater threats may lurk underground. A recent government study found that groundwater in 90% of China's cities is contaminated, most of it severely. Chinese media responded with surprising urgency – the Straits Times newspaper in southeastern Fujian province presented the findings in a full front-page spread.

"Groundwater is a key source of drinking water, industrial and agricultural use, especially in northern China," said Ma. "If this resource gets contaminated, it's far more difficult to restore than surface water or the air."

1.5C Enough to Unleash the Permafrost Greenhouse Gases

A team of researchers, led by Oxford University scientists, has concluded that global warming of just 1.5 degrees Celsius will trigger the melting of the world's permafrost and, with it, the release of the CO2 and methane greenhouse gases it now holds safely trapped.

The circumpolar permafrost belt that makes up 24% of the landmass of the northern hemisphere is believed to hold hundreds of gigatonnes of greenhouse gases that, if released, would cause "a massive warming effect."

However, any such melting would be likely to take many decades, so the initial release of greenhouse gas would probably be on a much smaller scale.

The researchers, led by experts from Oxford University, studied stalactites and stalagmites in Siberian caves that have formed over hundreds of thousands of years. The stalactites and stalagmites formed during periods of gradual melting, when meltwater dripped into the caves, but stopped growing when temperatures fell again and the permafrost refroze. Scientists can measure the growth and halting of stalactite and stalagmites by cutting through the structures at various points corresponding to given time periods in the Earth's history.

"I would expect to see continuous permafrost start to thaw along the boundaries at this threshold of 1.5C [in future]," said Anton Vaks, of the Earth sciences department at Oxford, who led the research. Temperatures in the region were 0.5-1C higher than in modern times for a period about 120,000 years ago, and at that time stalactites in caves further south, near Lake Baikal, showed signs of growth, and therefore melting.

But for the same period, the stalactites in the far northern cave – called the Ledyanaya Lenskaya cave, near the town of Lensk at latitude 60N – did not grow, showing that the permafrost remained intact at those temperatures. "This indicates that 1.5C appears to be something of a tipping point," said Vaks.

At present, global average temperatures are about 0.6C-0.7C above pre-industrial levels. This means, according to Vaks, that climate modellers should include the possibility of permafrost beginning to melt in their models.

BC Navigable Waters Protections Gutted at Pipeline Operators' Request

The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association used its clout with the sleazy government of Sideshow Steve Harper to modify the Navigable Waters Protection Act.   Greenpeace used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the truth.

The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association met with senior government officials in the fall of 2011, urging them not just to streamline environmental assessments, but also to bring in "new regulations under (the) Navigable Waters Protection Act," a CEPA slide presentation shows.

A copy of the Oct. 27 presentation made to then-deputy minister of trade Louis Levesque was obtained by Greenpeace Canada and shared with The Canadian Press.

With so many of the pipeline-related rules in flux, the CEPA board of directors decided to hold its fall strategy meeting in Ottawa, and meet with Levesque at the same time.
 
The first budget omnibus bill in June contained a replacement for the Environmental Assessment Act and also a provision to remove pipelines and power lines from provisions of the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Predictably, reaction from environmentalists was negative, while business and the natural resource sector reacted positively to the changes.

But then the government surprised many close observers by going even further in a second omnibus bill, C-45. The Navigable Waters Protection Act was changed to the Navigation Protection Act, significantly reducing its scope over Canada's waters.

Transport Minister Denis Lebel has argued that the changes were in response to demands from municipalities, who found that the act was tying them up in red tape as they tried to build bridges and culverts, said spokesman Mike Winterburn.

But over the decades, the act — originally written in 1882 — had morphed into a central pillar of environmental legislation. Critics say the major changes in C-45 were never discussed in that context.
"I never really knew where this call for change came from," said NDP environment critic Megan Leslie.

At the time, the House of Commons environment committee was reviewing the Environmental Assessment Act, and the need for changes did not come up despite vibrant discussions about how to streamline approvals for resource development, she said.

"It was never in any documents, it was never an addendum to testimony or anything like that. And in some private meetings I've had with some industry reps, they too have expressed to me that they don't know why the Navigable Waters Act changes were made."

While Leslie said it's perfectly acceptable for industry groups to present the government with lists of policy recommendations, "what's not normal is that those changes are accepted holus-bolus, without any consultation."

The changes prompted another outcry late last year from environmentalists, who were then joined by First Nations across the country who took to the streets in protest.

Now, as U.S. President Barack Obama has signalled his intention to focus on climate change, the Harper cabinet is scrambling to tout its green credentials and prove the worthiness of Canadian pipelines — especially since Obama's decision on the Keystone XL pipeline is pending.

Greenpeace Canada's climate and energy co-ordinator, Keith Stewart, wonders if the government and the pipeline industry are having any regrets, given the push-back.

"I think it's a case of 'be careful what you ask for,'" he said.

Both the pipeline industry and the federal government want faster approvals as well as "social licence" in the form of positive public support. But achieving the first goal is limiting their ability to achieve the second goal, he added.

"The pipeline companies ultimately got the kind of changes they wanted to Environmental Assessment legislation and the Navigable Waters Protection Act in the 2012 budget omnibus bills. This may prove to be a pyrrhic victory, however."
 

Breaking Harper's Siege on Science

Could the courts force Sideshow Steve Harper to take his gags off federal government scientists?   Democracy Watch and the University of Victoria's Environmental Law Clinic may soon test the legality of Harper's abuse of democracy.

The Information Commissioner of Canada is being asked to investigate whether "federal government policy forcing scientists to jump through hoops before speaking with the media" breaches the Access to Information Act.

"In sharp contrast to past Canadian practice and current U.S. Government practice, the federal government has recently made efforts to prevent the media and the general public from speaking to government scientists,” said Tyler Sommers, coordinator of Democracy Watch, in a statement.

He noted that the scientists conduct research that is paid for by taxpayers who therefore have a right to learn the results.

Calvin Sandborn, legal director of the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Clinic, said in a statement that "Canadians cannot make smart choices about critical issues such as climate change, oil sands development, and environmental protection if the public does not have full, timely access to the government’s best scientific knowledge on those issues.

"This is why we’ve filed this complaint and why we are asking for a full investigation."

It's time Harper and his political commissars in the PMO were brought to heel.   By blocking public access to Canada's civil and armed services they have transformed both into Harper's partisan political agencies.   This crap has gone on far too long thanks to the complacency of our corporate media cartel and our cowed opposition parties.