Global Warming and Non-symetical confidence intervals

The Australian is reporting on a new study of Antartica's ice melting. The short story is that it is melting faster than expected and the explanatory theory is that a warm water current is moving closer to shore than it used to be.

THE most comprehensive study to date of Antarctica's ice confirms growing concern that the ice cap is melting faster than predicted...West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula lost nearly 200 billion tonnes of ice in 2006 alone.

That is 75 per cent more than losses in 1996...

According to Dr Rignot, the results showed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had underestimated the impact of polar melting in its predictions of possible sea level rises next century....[emphasis by Fester]

"This work suggests that the ice flow is accelerating," Dr Allison said.

"It's worrying because ... the changes are happening due to processes we don't understand."

The bolded portion of this article is a common theme of global warming research. When new research is being done, it is either confirming the central hypothesis, or if there is a difference, it is towards faster and more severe consequences. The confidence interval has a central tendency of 'big problem' and the array of outcomes and potential problem spaces trend towards the right hand side of a mental graph which means more severe outcomes are possible. Despite what deniers are saying, the evidence is coming in that the probability of no change is next to nil and benign change is looking less likely.

Partisanship, marginal members and majority of the whole v. majority of the majority

I have to disagree with Shamanic's earlier argument that Krugman is implicitly and unfairly criticizing Barack Obama's rhetoric of bi-partisanship. I think our difference lies within the nature of the agendas being pursued and the internal and informal House organizing rules that will allow a projected diminished Republican House and Senate caucuses to be very partisan vehicles.

I believe the GOP would hemorrhage voters if Obama faced Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee (my gut says it's one of the two, but we'll know in a month or so). Obama's coattails could sweep in a dramatic Democratic majority to augment the narrow one getting thrashed between the GOP minority and the 25% man right now.

Bipartisanship is a lot less necessary the closer you get to 60 Senate seats, and while Obama's agenda is hardly revolutionary, I think the general feeling about him is that he will work diligently and -- more importantly -- smartly to implement it, creating stakeholders out of disparate interests.

I'll first disagree on the hemorraging of either registred Republicans or strongly Republican leaning unaffiliated voters from the Republican coalition. Clinton performs the weakest in the head to heads compared to Obama and Edwards, but not by a significant margin against Obama. He does better but not amazingly so.

As Greg Sargant notes at the Horses Mouth, gridlock has a simple explanation:

Partisan gridlock happens because people -- and by extension, political parties -- disagree about stuff. One party wants to do one thing on a particular issue. Another party says No. The first party offers a few concessions. The second party still says No. That's where "partisan gridlock" comes from -- underlying disagreement on issues [my emphasis]

I'll agree with Krugman, and I believe Shamanic will agree with me, that all of the major Democratic candidates are proposing roughly similiar progressive plans in a variety of policy fields. Details definately matter, but the agendas proposed, in broad strokes, are interchangable. Edwards, Obama and Clinton are all broadly proposing carbon dioxide cap and trades/auction/taxes, some form of massively expanded health care payment and access that will eventually lead to some bastard step child of single payer, and about the same Iraq policy and non-comments about residual forces.

And here is the problem with the bipartisanship mien --- addressing CO2 and healthcare are system changing moves that dramatically impact the Republican coalition's ability to restrengthen itself without dramatically recasting itself and rearranging internal power distribution.

Even very optimistically assuming the Democrats pick up a net of seven seats in the Senate and net another twenty in the House, two problems emerge. One is more pronounced in the Senate, as the six potential net pick-up seats have four Republicans (Sununu, Warner, Snow, Smith) who are occassionally willing to defect from the rest of the Republican caucus on their pet issues or to moderate their conservative votes for a swing(ish) state. Other potential Democratic pick-ups will be in New Mexico and Colorado which will lead to net improvements in Democratic margins by almost 2 full votes, and potentially the scandal seat in Alaska. The Democrats will increase the size of their caucus faster than they will increase their vote counts even assuming that no current Democrat defects on any particular vote. Seeing Landrieu lose to a conservative Republican conversely has less impact on any particular vote. The same basic dynamic will play in the House, as Democrats are targetting Republicans who already occassionally defect from the caucus, so a net 1 pick-up is a little less than 1 expected value vote on any given progressive bill.

The second problem is the way that Nancy Pelosi has decided to run her Democratic caucus and the rule sets of the House. She has decided to adapt a "majority of the whole" operation where bills will be scheduled if they have a majority of the entire House behind it. This is in contrast to the Republican rules of 'majority of the majority' where the Republican caucus would have internal whip counts behind legislation which when presented to the entire House would have near unified GOP support even if there was significant internal divisons.

Assuming as I do that carbon dioxide policy and healthcare are coalition rejiggering efforts, they will only pass the House in a majority of a majority rule framework if they are anything that vaguely resembles their campaign intent. In a majority of the whole framework, the Republican Caucus will first have higher degrees of unity due the losses of their marginal and moderate members (see New England in 2006) and the ability to offer Blue Dog/Bush Dog the marginal decision maker value and dictate to their own self-importance. Any GOP+Bush Dog bill on carbon dioxide or healthcare will be a hollow farce in actually achieving its goals beyond shoveling pork to extractive and protected industries. The only way that a good bill gets out of the House and into the Senate where it faces its own concentrated minority opposition, is through majority of the majority rules

Pushing through these two major policy initiatives are coalition cutting efforts that are also good public policy. Even if these are very good first steps and not the entire marathon, the political, and economic pay-offs that should occur will start occurring fairly quickly which means we should expect either hollow shells of bi-partisan bills, or a knock-out, drag down partisan fight as either, and especially both policies, are existential threats to the current Republican Party coalition.

Bottlenecks and seccessions

The American South in 1861 thought that it was the swing producer of a key industrial commodity and through this economic bottleneck it could squeeze foreign support and recognition in its rebellion against the North. Cotton diplomacy and the belief that major power economies would fail if cotton was withheld or made too expensive was one of the impetuous for the Southern belief that they only needed to be able to fight a short war as that was the only war that they had a chance of winning.

Instead the combination of large strategic cotton reserves from the bumper crop of 1860, European fear of a general war with the Federal United States (probably due to still fresh memories of US successes as commerce raiders in 1812 as well as a potential fracturing of the Concert of Vienna), and fairly rapid substitution of cotton supplies from Mexico, Egypt and India dramatically reduced the value and credibility of Confederate cotton diplomacy.

In my post on Bolivian natural gas rent seeking a couple of days ago, I had pointed out a few other examples of local sub-national groups seeking to use at least the perception of a key commodity bottleneck to overleverage their bids for greater de facto or de jure autonomy in southern Iraq and Nigeria. The Sunni Arab insurgencies pounding of the northern Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline system has been a counterbid to reduce the leverage of Iraqi Kurds to do the same thing.

I am speculating, and would love to be corrected, if bottleneck intensification and rent seeking behavior is more common at the dawn of change in economic systems as the bottlenecks that can be manipulated to apply the most pressure on major power economies are narrowest when they have become the most exploited and that substitution is near, but not quite available just yet.

The US Civil War was at the dawn of the transition from internal water power to coal and steam power and now we seem to be at a transitional stage where the marginal increases in energy expenditures are electrical and non-petroleum derived. Yet we are still at least a few years off from this change-over and the value of the chokepoint commodity is very high and anyone with more than three wells can credibly claim to be a swing producer at this time....

EU Accuses US Of Blocking Climate Talks

By Cernig

The member nations of the European Union seem surprised that a Bush administration which has for years denied scientific consensus so they could better serve corporate interests is still dragging its feet.

The European Union accused the United States on Thursday of blocking goals for fighting climate change at U.N. talks in Bali and threatened to boycott U.S. talks among top greenhouse gas emitting nations.

The December 3-14 Bali talks are split over the guidelines for starting two years of formal negotiations on a deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, a U.N. pact capping greenhouse gas emissions of all industrial nations except the United States until 2012.

"If we would have a failure in Bali it would be meaningless to have a major economies' meeting" in the United States, Humberto Rosa, Portugal's Secretary of State for Environment, said on the penultimate day of the talks.

...The EU wants Bali's final text to agree a non-binding goal of cuts in emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, of 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 for industrial economies. The United States, Japan and Canada are opposed, saying any figures would prejudge the outcome.

...Washington submitted a new text to the talks around midnight on Thursday that stressed voluntary goals for greenhouse gases rather than binding Kyoto-style caps for developed countries.

The Bushies moved the goalposts at the last minute to throw a spanner in the works? Yah don't say!

For those who have been following the diplomatic obstructionism practised by the White House over Iran's nuclear program - where the Bush administration demands that Iran stop enrichment before negotiations can begin on whether Iran should stop enrichment - will love this bit of hypocrisy:

"Those who are suggesting that you can magically find agreement on a metric when you are just starting negotiations, that in itself is a blocking element," said James Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

This from the same James Connaughton who pressured the EPA to dramatically weaken the wording of its public statements about the air quality in New York City in the days after the September 11, 2001 attacks and who is a former lobbyist for the power industry and various large electricity users. Has there ever been a Bush administration apparatchik who opened his or her mouth in good faith?

The Euros are asking for a non-binding agreement on a goal, to show willing. If only the Bush administration would take lessons on understanding the diplomatic process when it comes to Iran. But what the EU needs to realise is that a European boycott of any further talks would be regarded as a success by the White House.

Climate deniers - skeptical of facts, but not of the skeptics

By Libby

I expect the usual suspects, who just can't seem to grasp the difference between the weather and the climate, will be jumping on this latest allegation of climate data tampering.

The IPCC falsified data showing a sea level rise from 1992-2002 according to Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, former head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden. In an interview by George Murphy, Morner cites various examples of falsification of evidence claiming sea level rises.

McQ advises that we "be very skeptical and require a very high level of proof, not conjecture, before agreeing to open your wallet." I assume that means we should be skeptical of the majority who take climate change seriously since he notes with a hearty heh that Mörner isn't at all impressed with the computer models used.

Too bad the deniers don't use the same level of scrutiny on the skeptics before they wholehearted embrace their findings. A quick google reveals the old professor has a quirk of his own and may well have his own reasons for alleging improprities. They're rectangular, usually green and fit in a wallet.

Axel-Morner claims to be an expert in "dowsing," the practice of finding water, metals, gemstones etc. through the use of a Y-shaped twig. Axel-Morner's attempt to prove his dowsing abilities is chronicled by James Randi, the well-known myth buster, who has offered the longstanding One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.

Listed as an "allied expert" for a Canadian group called the "Natural Resource Stewardship Project," (NRSP) a lobby organization that refuses to disclose it's funding sources. Two of the three Directors on the board of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project are registered energy industry lobbyists and senior executives of the High Park Advocacy Group, a Toronto based lobby firm that specializes in “energy, environment and ethics.”

Yeah, that bit about ethics made me chuckle too.

Power From The People

By Cernig

Just yesterday, I was wondering why, if whole cities in Iraq can be outfitted with solar-powered street lighting by the U.S. military, the same lights aren't already in widespread use in Arizona, Texas etc.

Today, the UK Conservative Party announced that it wants to emulate another no-brainer idea, this one from mainland Europe.

At least 1m households and businesses in Britain could be generating large amounts of electricity for the grid within a decade, but it will need an overhaul of the electricity supply industry, the Conservative party said yesterday.

The party would create a mass market for decentralised "micro-energy" by encouraging everyone to invest in their own solar power and other renewable electricity generating schemes. A guaranteed price for the electricity generated in homes would be paid, with a further guarantee to run the scheme for at least 20 years.

The "feed-in tariff" scheme proposed by the Conservatives would bring Britain into line with Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries where householders and businesses generate electricity from rooftops, gardens and buildings.

In Germany more than 300,000 solar systems have been installed in three years and micro-generation provides nearly 12% of all the country's electricity. Householders can earn 8% to 10% returns on investing in their own home systems and in some cases pay their mortgages with the income earned.

Take-up of micro-power has been very slow in Britain, where no incentives are paid to small scale electricity generators. "We need to move from a top down, old world, centralised electricity system to a bottom up, new world decentralised system," said David Cameron.

The Tories seem to have one-upped Labour's Brown, an advocate of green policies and combatting global warming - on this idea. Congratulations and give the policy wonk responsible a raise.

The effects would be to lower individuals' power bills, break up power generation monopolies, lower carbon emissions, reduce dependency on foreign oil and it's a free market initiative. What's not to like?

Which U.S. party will be first to steal it in time to make it part of their 2008 platform?

(H/T: Kat)

The Top 10 BS Climate Change Denials

By Cernig

The top 10 arguments of climate change denialists, with their counter-arguments, courtesy of the BBC.

Parking, commuting and tax incentives

I was going through the Blogburst leaderboard and saw Don't Mess with Taxes and they had an interesting little explanation of a program that my employer offers and I take advantage of to pay for my monthly bus pass:

Transportation Reimbursement Incentive Programs (TRIP) can help you save tax dollars based on the cost of your daily commute. This essentially is an FSA for some commuting costs. Your pretax payroll deductions go into a TRIP account from which you are reimbursed to pay for transit passes or, in some cases, qualified parking expenses.

The monthly maximum you can contribute for mass transit (buses, trains, els, subways, etc.) is $105. The monthly maximum for parking-related expenses is $200. [emphasis mine]

This tax benefit buys me an extra lunch or two a month. For me it is a stupid benefit as it is not changing my behavior. I would still be taking the bus into work every morning even if I was not gaining a tax advantage as the bus stops within 50 meters of my house, drops me off three blocks from the office, and is reliably faster than sitting in traffic.

However the mixture seems a bit off to me on the disparity between the public transit versus the parking deduction limits. If one has a goal of reducing congestion, making it cheaper to drive into town does not do a whole lot towards that goal. If the goal is to reduce gas usage and carbon dioxide emissions, it is a bit trickier as the subsidy could be argued as a conservation measure if it means more people are willing to work in a dense central business district instead of in free parking suburbia where more driving is needed by most employees to get to the office.

On first glance, if I was a Congress critter, my idea would be to equalize the two benefits by dollar amount with the objective of being revenue neutral, so a slight bump up in the transit limit and a significant decrease in the parking limit with the idea of making the marginal incentive to drive alone into the central city slightly less attractive.

Concentrate On The Science, Not The Gore

By Cernig

Amidst all the brouhaha over the most famous (in America) of the two recipients of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, one thing seems to have been lost. It's about the science, not the Goracle.

The joint award of the Nobel Peace Prize highlights the importance of climate change and the need for action to meet the challenges it presents, India's Rajendra Kumar Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, said Friday.

The prize - won jointly by the IPCC and former United States vice president Al Gore - sent a powerful message to the global community which, Pachauri hoped, would stimulate action in the right direction.

"The award gives the whole issue of climate change greater visibility," he said at press briefings in Delhi and via video-link in Geneva, where the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has its headquarters.

The IPCC was set up in 1988 by the World Metereological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with the task of gathering, assessing and presenting scientific data on climate change. Pachauri, 67, took over as
chairman of the IPCC in 2002.

Saying he was "humbled and honoured" by the award, Pachauri stressed that it actually belonged to the hundreds of scientists and authors who had contributed to the work of the IPCC. "They have worked extremely hard. I am only symbolic of these people who deserve to be talking to you."

Exactly.

Am I alone in thinking that conservative outrage aimed at Gore isn't really outrage at all, but is more about attacking the messenger because it's easier than attacking the message?

Not a bad run

First an Oscar, then an Emmy, and now a Nobel, not a bad run at all for someone who was supposed to be a perpetual political punchline.

I also think that the Draft Gore folks will continue to be disappointed as I just do not see him getting into the race despite the fact that I would quickly move from happily undecided to a Gore partisan as being President does not make a whole lot of sense politically if one assumes that Gore is passionate about both media disintermediation and environmentalism. It is the lurking threat of endorsement and a potential future run that serves Gore poltically. Another blogger (I wish I remember whom) wrote that as an outside heavyweight with significant activist, elite and rank and file support, Gore can create strong incentives for leading Democratic candidates to come closer to his prefered policy positions in order to continue to 'sideline' his credible threat to run. However if he enters a race, there is no political profit from converging with Gore's high salience positions within the Democratic primary electorate.

CO2 makes me grumpy

I have an odd internal thermometer. My comfort zone tends to be 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler on both ends than most people's comfort zones. This is fine in the winter as I'll hold the heat a couple of degrees cooler and save some serious money on the heating bill, but as soon as it is summer, I become very, very grumpy. I am even worse when it is hot and humid despite the best efforts of air conditioning. If it is an 80/80 day I am downright unpleasant and non-responsive to the rest of the world.

I can now blame global warm for some of my annual summer anti-social tendencies, as the AP is reporting that increased CO2 concentrations, besides increasing surface temperatures also significantly increases humidity.

The amount of moisture in the air near the surface... increased 2.2 percent in just under three decades. And computer models show that the only explanation is man-made global warming, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature...

Humidity increased over most of the globe, including the eastern United States, said study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University....The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture....

It will only feel worse in the future, Gillett said. Moisture in the air increases by about 6 percent with every degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), he said. Using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's projections for temperature

Time to look into some Churchill beach front property to cope with the summer of 2022

[/light snark]

2007 - The Year Of Climate Change

By Cernig

Of all the things the history books may note 2007 for, the most important is likely to be that this is the year the U.S. government finally admitted human-driven climate change was real - while still refusing to actually do anything about it - and the year the evidence finally became in-your-face.

A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change "mega disaster", the United Nation's emergency relief coordinator, Sir John Holmes, has warned.

Sir John, a British diplomat who is also known as the UN's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.

"We are seeing the effects of climate change. Any year can be a freak but the pattern looks pretty clear to be honest. That's why we're trying ... to say, of course you've got to deal with mitigation of emissions, but this is here and now, this is with us already," he said.

As a measure of the worsening situation, Ocha, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - part of the UN secretariat that employs Sir John - has issued 13 emergency "flash" appeals so far this year. The number is three more than in 2005, which held the previous record.

Two years ago only half the international disasters dealt with by Ocha had anything to do with the climate; this year all but one of the 13 emergency appeals is climate-related. "And 2007 is not finished. We will certainly have more by the end of the year, I fear," added Sir John, who is in charge of channelling international relief efforts to disaster areas.

I keep saying this - it constantly depresses me that no Democratic candidate has yet worked out that climate change is a national security matter of the foremost importance - far greater than any threat from "Islamofascism" - and that Republican intransigence has seriously weakened national security.

As weather patterns change around the world with increasing rapidity, millions upon millions of people will be dislocated from their homes or come into conflict over resources like food and water which are no longer predictable. Here in the U.S., for instance, it's becoming likely that a shift in the general air currents will turn the Midwest into a new dustbowl while previously arid Southwest Texas will see a new influx of humidity, rain and extreme weather which will, in a couple or four decades, turn the almost desert around San Antonio into a prepubescent rain forest. Would anyone like to predict the consequences of such a weather change for America's crop-growing states? It's above my pay-grade, I know that much.

Repeat that, with even greater extremes, over the whole globe. It should be obvious that even First World nations (with serious arsenals) are going to see massive geopolitical shifts and that will inevitably lead to massive international tension or even wars. Yet by sitting on their thumbs and denying the facts for so long, the Bush administration and Republicans in general have left the U.S. dangerously behind the curve. Other nations have been planning for climate change, even planning to take geopolitical advantage of climate change, for years now. The U.S. isn't even limbering up.

Associating climate change with the needs of national security has to be a no-brainer for the Dems. Why have none of them figured this out yet?

Northwest Passage Ice-Free For First Time

By Cernig

I keep saying it - Republican and Bush administration unwillingness to admit that gobal warming exists has meant the U.S. is behind the curve on matters crucial to national security. Their denial has meant delay in formulating policy, and that delay has made the world and America less safe.

Dramatic evidence of that came from the European Space Agency today. The Northwest Passage between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans is fully ice-free and navigable for the first time.

The opening of the sea routes are already leading to international disputes.

Canada says it has full rights over those parts of the Northwest Passage that pass though its territory and that it can bar transit there.

But this has been disputed by the US and the European Union.

They argue new route should be an international strait that any vessel can use.

The reality of global warming has been faced by every other nation with a compelling interest in the Arctic - except the U.S.A. While those other nations are building new military bases, new icebreakers and ice-adapted warships the U.S. has fallen behind. While those other nations have been staking out claims to resource-rich areas of seabed and tallying up passage tarrifs from new routes that will make the Panama Canal obsolete for half the year, the U.S. has been sticking it's head in a melting snowbank.

The emerging geopolitical challenges of global warming are very clear. It seems to me that the Democratic frontrunners would want to get behind the advice of military experts in what has got to be a winning issue for them - the marriage of being strong on national security, international free trade and action on climate change. It mystifies me why they haven't made a bigger deal of this. Any clues?

Fashion statement

By Libby

The wingers who call me a conspiracy theorist for believing those who currently hold power are capable of grossly abusing it, are largely the same people who are forever warning me about the hordes of Muslims that are going to invade America, install a Sharia government and force me to wear a burqa. Putting aside that no one has ever been able to force me to wear anything since I was five years old, anyone who has ever seen me on a bad hair day might think that's more of a blessing than a curse.

But what if they're right and women were suddenly forced to dress in a certain style? In the first place, it wouldn't be so different from the 50s, the decade the wingers seem to be longing to return to. We had fashion police in those days too. You couldn't wear white except between Memorial and Labor Days. You must wear short gloves and a little hat to be respectable. Hemlines were strictly enforced by the fashion magazines and society mavens. Heck there was a time hankerchiefs were mandatory to avoid social ostracizing.

Further, it appears the Muslim dress code isn't as strict as it's cracked up to be. The burqini is flying off the shelves and doesn't look that different from an ordinary jogging suit to me. Curiously, the demand isn't just coming from devout Muslims.

Conservative Christians, cancer patients, burn victims and senior citizens, among others, have shown surprising interest. ...

[T]he Burqini swimsuit is making a statement. And that's the point, the designers say: the suits allow women, Muslim or not, to choose comfort over conformity. "I know it sounds like an oxymoron," says Sabet. "But this is really about freedom."

I think the pictured version is actually a rather attractive suit and that's a probably a good thing. It's more likely we'll all be forced to wear similar garments in order to spend a day in the sun because of environmental damage to the planet, long before any imagined universal Sharia law might ever require us to do so. [h/t Judi H.]

Yes, Virginia, Global Warming Is Still Real

By Cernig

See that graph? That's the corrected one after the supposedly massive "mistake" in calculations of US' temperatures for a few years - you know, the one the wingnuts have been making such a big song and dance about.

So yes, Virginia, global warming is still real.

(Hat Tip - Kevin Drum)

US Joins Arctic Land Grab?

By Cernig

Well no. Thanks to the Bush administration's policy of denying reality for so long, the US is still woefully behind the curve on one of the most important geopolitical developments of the 21st century. As prospects of Arctic ice melt have raised possibilities for trade via far shorter and soon ice-free Northern routes as well as opened up chances for mineral exploitation worth untold billions, the US has sat on its faith-based thumb. Meanwhile, nations like Russia, Canada and Denmark have been stealing a march on the world's only superpower.

The US actually could have a pretty good claim to some of those revealed riches, if it wanted to.

A U.S. Coast Guard cutter is headed to the Arctic this week on a mapping mission to determine whether part of this area can be considered U.S. territory, after recent polar forays by Russia and Canada.

The four-week cruise of the Coast Guard Cutter Healy starts Friday and aims to map the sea floor on the northern Chukchi Cap, an underwater plateau that extends from Alaska's North Slope some 500 miles northward.

...So why are the countries with Arctic coastlines all heading northward now?

Under the U.N. Law of the Sea treaty, every coastal state that has the potential to claim some part of the Arctic's undersea mineral wealth must make a claim to the U.N. Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

The United States is not now a party to the sea treaty, but Mayer and Andy Armstrong, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, held out hope that Washington might join.

Armstrong, who will also be aboard the U.S. cutter, acknowledged that this cruise will "map the location of features that would have a role in the U.S. extension of the continental shelf."

The scientists acknowledge that any such role would be fortuitous, however, as the cruise has been planned for three years and is not a response to other nations' forays Northwards. Of course, Republican hawks can't back any attempt to annex the seabed without admitting it will only become useful if they are wrong about climate change. But why are Democratic hawks sitting this one out?

Denmark Joins Arctic Land Grab race

By Cernig

Tiny Denmark is following in the footsteps of Canada and Russia, staking out its claim to Arctic territory in advance of global warming making the region's resources more exploitable.

The monthlong Danish expedition will seek evidence that the Lomonosov Ridge, a 1,240-mile underwater mountain range, is attached to the Danish territory of Greenland, making it a geological extension of the Arctic island.

That might allow the Nordic nation to stake a claim under a U.N. treaty that could stretch all the way the North Pole, although Canada and Russia also claim the ridge.

``The preliminary investigations done so far are very promising,'' Helge Sander, Denmark's minister of science, technology and innovation told Denmark's TV2 on Thursday. ``There are things suggesting that Denmark could be given the North Pole.''

The Danes plan to set off from Norway's remote Arctic islands of Svalbard aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which will be assisted by a powerful Russian nuclear icebreaker to plow through ice as thick as 16 feet in the area north of Greenland.

``No one has ever sailed in that area. Ships have sailed on the edges of the ice but no one has been in there,'' the expedition leader, Christian Marcussen, said in Copenhagen. ``The challenge for us will be the ice.''

The team includes 40 scientists, 10 of them Danish, and the crews of the icebreakers, which will use sophisticated equipment, including sonar, to map the seabed under the ice.

``We will be collecting data for a possible (sovereignty) demand,'' said Marcussen, of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. ``It is not our duty to formulate a demand of ownership.''

At what point, do you think, will US commentators realize these nations are serious about stealing a geopolitical advantage from climate change and this isn't a silly make-fun-of-Russian-subs story? Or that Bush and the conservative movement's dumb denial of global warming for so long has left the US with a massive hole in its future foreign policy planning?

Polar Land-Grab Gets PrimeTime Coverage In Russia

By Cernig

Russia plans to plant a flag 14,000 feet below the North Pole tomorrow as part of a campaign to annex a resource-rich section of Arctic seabed the size of Western Europe.

The polar expedition aims to prove that the Lomonosov Ridge, an underwater shelf that runs through the Arctic, is an extension of Russian territory.

The Kremlin has poured £40 million into the voyage, which is receiving blanket coverage on state television, to try to secure billions of tonnes of untapped oil and gas reserves under the ocean. Two members of the Duma, the Russian parliament, will plant the one-metre flag, made of titanium, during what will be the first manned journey to the seabed of the North Pole.

“This will be a truly historic dive,” Anatoli Sagalevich, chief of the Oceanology Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Itar-Tass. “The human eye has never seen the North Pole from a depth of 4,300 metres.”

Before the expedition left the northern port of Murmansk, Artur Chilingarov, 68, the expedition leader, said: “The Arctic is ours and we should demonstrate our presence.”

Mr Chilingarov is a deputy speaker in the Duma and president of the Association of Polar Explorers of the Russian Federation. His fellow submariner, Vladimir Gruzdev, said that the expedition would “remind the whole world that Russia is a great polar and scientific power”.

More than 100 scientists are on board the Akademik Fyodorov, Russia’s flagship research vessel, for what is the largest expedition yet organised to the Pole. A nuclear-powered ice-breaker, the Rossiya, is accompanying the ship.

Two deep-water submersibles will make three dives to the sea bed to try to confirm research by a Russian expedition in May suggesting that the Lomonosov Ridge is an extension of the Siberian continental shelf.

No country has jurisdiction over the Arctic, which is governed by the International Seabed Authority, but Russia has long sought to extend its territorial boundary. It lodged a demand for 1.2 million sq km (463,000 sq miles) of ocean in 2001 with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which asked for more scientific data to support Russia’s case.

The expeditions are collecting data to back a fresh submission in 2009, the centenary of the first journey to the North Pole. At stake are vast reserves of oil and gas that are considered increasingly viable economically as climate change makes the Arctic less hostile to exploitation. Russian geologists argue that the area contains 10 billion tonnes of oil and gas, though some estimates put the total closer to 100 billion tonnes.

Russia’s claim to the North Pole is opposed by the four other Arctic countries — Canada, the United States, Norway and Denmark, through its sovereignty over Greenland. Under international law, each nation is entitled to control an economic zone within 200 miles of its continental shelf, but the limits of the shelf are disputed.

Climate change is increasingly relevant to any national security debate and is yet another situation where Bush and the Republicans have weakened that national security by sticking their heads in the sand. I've written about this one before, saying that Putin (like the Canadians) is playing chess for a world with a changed climate while Bush is still playing denialist tiddlywinks - but I failed to realize just how populist and nationalist the issue has become in Russia. Maybe there's a message there for Democratic strategists?

Update Just to underscore the message that Bush and the current crop of US foreign policy experts have dropped the ball in a big way on the security implications of global warming:

the battle for the Arctic is fast becoming a global issue. Melting ice has meant the opening up of the North West Passage to commercial shipping is now possible in the summer months and, given rising temperatures, a possibility all year round in the future. The opening up of the passage can shorten the distance ships have to travel between Europe and Asia by up to 2,000 nautical miles over the established trade route through the Panama Canal.

Given the area's geopolitical importance, it is no surprise Britain is closely monitoring the situation as part of its commitment to Nato. 'Britain has been sending Trafalgar SSN-class submarines to the Arctic since 1986 because it wants to retain its under-ice capability,' said Huebert, who predicted it would not be long before their sonar registers the presence of an old foe. 'The Russians are rebuilding their navy,' Huebert said. 'They've just launched a submarine for the first time since 1987 and they've placed orders for three more.'

...During its journey last week a mysterious aircraft appeared above the Akademik Fyodorov, causing a ripple of excitement among the journalists on board. Russian media widely reported the aircraft to be a Nato spy plane. It may have been paranoia but in the frozen waters around the North Pole one thing is certain: the days of the Cold War are back.

Let's hear from some of the Dem candidates on this issue.

English Floods The Real Test For Brown

By Cernig

Thousands have been stranded and hundreds of thousands left without drinking water or power by massive floods across Central England and Wales over recent weeks. These floods, rather than recent incompetent terrorist activity, are set to be the first real test of the mettle of Britain's new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

The abortive and incompetent nature of the car bombs in London and Glasgow meant that they were no real crisis no matter how much conservative media hype in the US and UK tried to make them one. However, the current situation, which has gathered almost no pundit attention in the US, is a far sterner test for Brown's abilities. The entire swing-voter region of England is under threat of flooding, and how Brown reacts - his leadership ability, his ability to generate effective responses, his ability to remain calm and decisive - will determine public opinion in the run-up to the next general election. It is no hyperbole to say it is a mini-Katrina for Brown and that his star will fall fast if his government emulates the failures of Bush's administration.

The BBC is probably the best place to get an overview of the extent of the crisis.

The flooding crisis in central and western England continues with thousands of homes losing water and electricity supplies.
Up to 350,000 people in Gloucestershire will be left without running water by Monday evening, as the Severn and Thames rivers threaten to overflow.

The Environment Agency said water levels on both rivers had exceeded those of devastating floods in 1947.

...Severe flood warnings are in place for the Midlands, Oxfordshire and Bedfordshire. At their height, some rivers will be more than 20ft higher than normal. Environment Agency spokesman Anthony Perry said: "We have not seen flooding of this magnitude before. The benchmark was 1947 and this has already exceeded it."

...The Environment Agency has issued eight severe flood warnings and says the situation is "critical". There are four in the Midlands for the River Avon and River Severn between Worcester, Tewkesbury and Gloucester.

Three severe flood warnings are in place for Oxfordshire, from Eynsham to Abingdon, and one has been issued for the River Great Ouse from Turvey to Sharnbrook in Bedfordshire.

At one stage, thousands were trapped by rising water on the main M5 motorway near Birmingham, the UK's second largest city. Tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed by water which is up to six feet deep. Both of Britain's largest rivers, the Thames and Severn, are in danger of bursting their banks in several places. Some areas have seen a month's rainfall in one day and there's more rain still to come.

So how is Brown doing? Well, it's a mixed bag to be honest. He's come under a lot of criticism for the inability of what in many cases is Victorian infrastructure to cope with the rain. Spending should have been greater and better targeted, many say. Brown has to bear some blame for this - he's been in charge of Britain's purse strings for a very long time now - but also can point to decades long neglect all the way back to the Thatcher years and even beyond. The military and emergency services have done great work in the biggest civil rescue operation mounted in the UK since WW2 - but could have done even better if the military wasn't overstretched by commitement to Bush's adventure in Iraq. He's ordered a review into the response to the flooding and a 25% rise in spending on flood and coastal defenses - but that's after the horse has bolted and it seems true that his government could have been more ready if they had heeded weather experts warnings in the earliest stages of the flooding.

It's unclear as yet where public opinion will settle, but Brown's definitely learned from Bush's disaster. His government has been quick to say that the lessons needed will be learned and applied and has the support of the Conservative party in not playing a blame game (for now).

Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said the floods were "not the government's fault" and "we are not interested in playing a blame game".

"They are a humbling reminder of the awesome power of nature.

"What matters is to be quite certain that everything feasible that could be done to respond both to the threat of the flooding and to the flooding events themselves was done, is being done and will continue to be done," he told MPs.

It also looks very like the floods will give new popular impetus to Brown's stance on global warming, as many experts are saying this kind of rainfall could become far more common in the UK.

"For the first time, climate scientists have clearly detected the human fingerprint on changing global precipitation patterns over the past century," researchers from Environment Canada said in a statement.

The scientists, writing in the journal Nature, found humans contributed significantly to these changes, which include more rain and snow in northern regions that include Canada, Russia and Europe, drier conditions in the northern tropics and more rainfall in the southern tropics.

So-called anthropogenic climate change has had a "detectable influence" on changes in average precipitation in these areas, and it cannot be explained by normal climate variations, they wrote.

Weather experts in Britain raised the possibility that the current rains there may be related to climate change.

"The global climate models indicate a future for the UK with drier summers and wetter winters, but storm events in the summer are predicted to be more frequent and more intense," David Butler of the University of Exeter said in a statement. "So it may well be the case that we will have to learn to live with more flooding.

Nick Reeves, executive director of the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management in Britain, said, "Extreme events such as we have seen in recent weeks herald the spectre of climate change and it would be irresponsible to imagine that they won't become more frequent."

If the flooding now wins Middle England over to Brown's policies on climate change, then he'll certainly come out as having been far-sighted and any failures in response to the current floods can then be blamed on naysayers and past government's short-sightedness. For now, even the extreme-right Daily Telegraph is giving Brown a pass. he appears to have weathered his first real crisis well.

Economic Advantage Trumps Global Warming Dangers

By Cernig

I've a suggestion for anyone left who denies global warming is a real and occuring problem - put your money where your mouth is and move to Tuvalu.

Veu Lesa, a 73-year-old villager in Tuvalu, does not need scientific reports to tell him that the sea is rising. The evidence is all around him. The beaches of his childhood are vanishing. The crops that used to feed his family have been poisoned by salt water. In April, he had to leave his home when a "king tide" flooded it, showering it with rocks and debris.

For Tuvalu, a string of nine picturesque atolls and coral islands, global warming is not an abstract danger; it is a daily reality. The tiny South Pacific nation, only four metres above sea level at its highest point, may not exist in a few decades. Its people are already in flight; more than 4,000 live in New Zealand, and many of the remaining 10,500 are planning to join the exodus. Others, though, are determined to stay and try to fight the advancing waves.

The outlook is bleak. A tidal gauge on the main atoll, Funafuti, suggests the sea level is climbing by 5.6mm a year, twice the average global rate predicted by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

There is not enough data yet to establish a definitive trend but that figure is alarming, implying a rise of more than half a metre in the next century. Most Tuvaluans live just one to two metres above sea level.

Funafuti's tranquil lagoon is adorned by a necklace of cream islets, each one tufted with dense vegetation. There used to be seven. Now there are six. The other one disappeared after a series of cyclones in the late 1990s. First, the palm trees were stripped off, then the sand, then the soil beneath. All that remains is a forlorn scrap of rubble, visible at low tide. It is an ominous indicator, in miniature, of what awaits Tuvalu's larger, populated islands.

Of all the low-lying nations menaced by global warming, little Tuvalu has been most vocal in the international arena. It recognised the threat early on, and successive governments have lobbied hard to alert the outside world to its predicament. The country - formerly one half of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, a British protectorate - joined the UN and the Commonwealth in order to raise its profile, and sent diplomats on globe-trotting missions.

Six or seven years on, Tuvaluans concluded that the international community - particularly the big industrialised nations puffing vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere - does not care. "They never listened when we asked for help," says Enate Evi, director of the Environment Department. "To be honest, I think they only care about themselves, and their economic advantage. That's how it feels, sitting here."

Tuvalu - the new headquarters for conservative denialist groups like this and this.