By Dr Gideon Polya on July 20th, 2009
Top scientists and economists tell us that Carbon Trading (Emissions Trading Scheme, ETS) proposals are dangerous, fraudulent Ponzi schemes and that genuine, non-manipulatable, equitable Carbon Taxes are urgently required to help stop planet-threatening carbon burning. [1].
16 million people die avoidably each year from deprivation (including 9.5 million infants) – and this global avoidable mortality holocaust is increasingly climate change-impacted. However, estimates from Dr James Lovelock FRS indicate that about 10 billion people will die this century due to unaddressed global warming – this including 6 billion infants, 3 billion Muslims, 2 billion Indians and 0.3 billion Bangladeshis. [2, 3].
Excess deaths (avoidable deaths) associated with the Bush (now Obama) wars and occupations in 1990-2009 (Occupied Haiti, Occupied Somalia, Occupied Palestine, Occupied Syria, Occupied Iraq, Occupied Diego Garcia, Occupied Afghanistan and US robot drone-bombed NW Pakistan) now total 9-11 million. [3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
It can be estimated from UN Population Division data that there are a total of 655,000 non-violent avoidable deaths from deprivation per year and 1,795 each day in the various Occupied countries of the American Empire. Thus in the first 6 months of Obama’s rule as President of the United States of America there have been 328,000 avoidable deaths from deprivation in the Overseas American Empire – this figure of about 0.3 million avoidable deaths in the Overseas American Empire under Obama does not include violent deaths from military actions of the US or its surrogates (as a notorious US general once declared: “We don’t do body counts’). [5, 7].
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By Simon Leufstedt on July 13th, 2009
The Inter Press Service has an interesting interview with James Lovelock, known for proposing the Gaia hypothesis, about everything from the IPCC to geo-engineering and climate tipping points.
Lovelock has earlier said that he believes that climate change is now irreversible. He predicts that the major part of the humans, more than six billion people, will get wiped out of the face of the earth due to wars, starvation, epidemics and chaos during the rest of the century due to the effects of a changing climate. Lovelock estimates that by year 2100 there will only be around 500 millions people left who struggles to survive on the few remaining liveable places on earth: Scandinavia, Canada and Iceland.
In the IPS interview Lovelock says he hopes that once climate disaster strikes “we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees”:
“TIERRAMÉRICA: What will this new climate be like?
JL: The tropical and subtropical zones of the Earth will be too hot and dry to grow food or support human life. People will be forced to migrate towards the poles to places like Canada. There will be less than one billion people by the end of the century. My hope is that we will stay civilised and those in the North will give refuge to the unimaginably large numbers of climate refugees.”
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By Simon Leufstedt on March 16th, 2009
Yesterday the new climate change movie “The Age of Stupid” had premiere in the UK. The movie stars Pete Postlethwaite as an archivist in the devastated world of the future, asking the question: “Why didn’t we stop climate change when we still had the chance?” He looks back on footage of real people around the world in the years leading up to 2015 before runaway climate change took place.
The movie has already received positive reviews in the press and celebrities, politicians and environmentalists have all praised it. The Guardian has said the movie is “fascinating”. And that “the message, never stated but constantly emerging, is that we all have our self-justifying myths. These myths prevent us from engaging with climate change.” The New Statesman says the movie is “anything but a good-guys-versus-bad-guys polemic. It is angry but nuanced, despairing but strangely motivating.”
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By Simon Leufstedt on January 22nd, 2009
In a confidential security review by Australia’s Defence Force, named “Climate Change, The Environment, Resources And Conflict”, the Australian army says climate change will pose “one of the biggest threats to security in the Pacific“. The confidential security review obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper also says that the natural resources under the melting Arctic ice may spark a global conflict.
“”Environmental stress, caused by both climate change and a range of other factors, will act as a threat multiplier in fragile states around the world, increasing the chances of state failure,” said the summary, published in the Herald on Wednesday.
“The Arctic is melting, potentially making the extraction of undersea energy deposits commercially viable. Conflict is a remote possibility if these disputes are not resolved peacefully,” the assessment said.”
According to the security review rising sea levels, caused by climate change, will “affect nations and islands with low-lying coastlines”, create climate refugees from the Pacific islands and result in more illegal fishing as food recourses will become rare.
By Dr Gideon Polya on January 5th, 2009
Australians (and indeed most people in the Western Murdochracies) live in an Orwellian world in which “war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength and 2 plus 2 does not equal 4”. [1]
Thus Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and a world leading per capita greenhouse gas polluter (the Developed World’s worst) but linear projections from official US Energy Information Administration data indicate that the Australian Government’s “carbon pollution REDUCTION policy” actually means that Australia’s disproportionately huge, annual Domestic plus Exported greenhouse gas pollution (in Mt CO2-e = million tonnes of CO2-e) will INCREASE from 885 Mt CO2-e (2000) to 1245 Mt (2020; an increase of 41%) to 1586 Mt (2050; an increase of 79%). [2]
Similarly, the Australian Government accepts the Israeli “Gaza rockets” excuse for the ongoing Gaza Massacre (over 300 Occupied Palestinians dead and 1,000 wounded, so far), ignoring official Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs data that 23 Israelis have been killed by Gaza rockets and mortars in the last 8.25 years. [3]
This latter statistic corresponds to an “annual homicide rate” of 0.4 per million (Israelis from Gaza rockets and mortars) as compared to 15 per million (Israelis murdered by Israelis), 164 per million (Palestinians killed violently by Israelis), 902 per million (Palestinian non-violent deaths through Israeli-imposed deprivation), 56 per million (Americans), 200 per million (African-Americans), 300 per million (Americans by Guns) and 473 per million (people of Detroit, Michigan, USA). [4]
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By Simon Leufstedt on August 6th, 2008
On this day, 63 years ago, USA dropped the nuclear bomb “Little Boy” on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on August 9, USA dropped a second nuclear bomb over Nagasaki in Japan. The bombs killed as many as 240 000 people. Thousands more died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bombs. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were civilians.
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By Benno Hansen on March 11th, 2008
Thursday and Friday this week the top boys and girls of the European Union meet in Brussels. EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Europe’s commissioner for external relations, Benita Ferrero-Waldner, have prepared a report on climate change and security risks in advance of the meeting. Today the conclusion of the report is being quoted in literally every media across the world. Here are a few samples.
BBC / EU warns of climate change threat.
An EU report says climate change will have a growing impact on global security, multiplying existing threats such as shortages of food and water.
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