Burn: Welcome to Carbon Age 3.0

The Third Carbon Age: Don’t for a Second Imagine We’re Heading for an Era of Renewable Energy

by Michael T. Klare - TomDispatch 
When it comes to energy and economics in the climate-change era, nothing is what it seems. Most of us believe (or want to believe) that the second carbon era, the Age of Oil, will soon be superseded by the Age of Renewables, just as oil had long since superseded the Age of Coal.

 President Obama offered exactly this vision in a much-praised June address on climate change. True, fossil fuels will be needed a little bit longer, he indicated, but soon enough they will be overtaken by renewable forms of energy.

Many other experts share this view, assuring us that increased reliance on “clean” natural gas combined with expanded investments in wind and solar power will permit a smooth transition to a green energy future in which humanity will no longer be pouring carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All this sounds promising indeed. There is only one fly in the ointment: it is not, in fact, the path we are presently headed down. The energy industry is not investing in any significant way in renewables. Instead, it is pouring its historic profits into new fossil-fuel projects, mainly involving the exploitation of what are called “unconventional” oil and gas reserves.

The result is indisputable: humanity is not entering a period that will be dominated by renewables. Instead, it is pioneering the third great carbon era, the Age of Unconventional Oil and Gas.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, How to Fry a Planet

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: The next TD post will be on Tuesday, August 13th.]

Look at it any way you want, and if you’re not a booster of fossil fuels on this overheating planet of ours, it doesn’t look good. Hardly a month passes, it seems, without news about the development of some previously unimaginable way to extract fossil fuels from some thoroughly unexpected place. The latest bit of “good” news: the Japanese government's announcement that natural gas has been successfully extracted from undersea methane hydrates. (Yippee!) Natural gas is gleefully touted as the “clean” fossil-fuel path to a green future, but evidence is mounting that the newest process for producing it also leaks unexpected amounts of methane, a devastating greenhouse gas. The U.S. cheers and is cheered because the amount of carbon dioxide it is putting into the atmosphere is actually falling. Then Duncan Clark at the British Guardian does the figures and discovers that “there has been no decline in the amount of carbon the U.S. is taking out of the ground. In fact, the trend is upwards. The latest year for which full data is available -- 2011 -- is the highest level on record.” It’s just that some of it (coal, in particular) was exported abroad to be burned elsewhere.

In the meantime, the next set of articles come out of scientific circles suggesting that the results of all this are far from cheery. An example: a recent paper in the prestigious journal Science indicates that “climate change is now set to occur at a pace ‘orders of magnitude more rapid’ than at any other time in the last 65 million years,” and we should prepare for a wave of species extinctions. In other words, the much-ballyhooed coming of North American energy “independence” is an upbeat way of saying that we will continue to heat the planet till hell boils over. (Of course, those who run the giant energy companies, the politicians in their pay, and their lobbyists and associated think tanks -- the real global “terrarists” for their urge to make historic profits off the heating of the planet -- will, of course, continue to cheer. Though it is notoriously hard to claim climate change as the author of any specific weather event, in the ever-hotter continental U.S., the experience of what’s being called “extreme weather” -- from drought to record wildfires, record heat waves to devastating tornadoes -- is increasingly part of the warp and woof of everyday life.

In this context, the latest post by Michael Klare, author of The Race for What’s Left, is singularly important, if also singularly unnerving. Klare, who has long been ahead of the curve in his work on energy and resources, offers a clear-eyed look at the energy road chosen, and the view to the horizon is anything but pretty. Tom

The Third Carbon Age: Don’t for a Second Imagine We’re Heading for an Era of Renewable Energy

by Michael T. Klare

That we are embarking on a new carbon era is increasingly evident and should unnerve us all. Hydro-fracking -- the use of high-pressure water columns to shatter underground shale formations and liberate the oil and natural gas supplies trapped within them -- is being undertaken in ever more regions of the United States and in a growing number of foreign countries. In the meantime, the exploitation of carbon-dirty heavy oil and tar sands formations is accelerating in Canada, Venezuela, and elsewhere.

It’s true that ever more wind farms and solar arrays are being built, but here’s the kicker: investment in unconventional fossil-fuel extraction and distribution is now expected to outpace spending on renewables by a ratio of at least three-to-one in the decades ahead.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), an inter-governmental research organization based in Paris, cumulative worldwide investment in new fossil-fuel extraction and processing will total an estimated $22.87 trillion between 2012 and 2035, while investment in renewables, hydropower, and nuclear energy will amount to only $7.32 trillion. In these years, investment in oil alone, at an estimated $10.32 trillion, is expected to exceed spending on wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels, hydro, nuclear, and every other form of renewable energy combined.

In addition, as the IEA explains, an ever-increasing share of that staggering investment in fossil fuels will be devoted to unconventional forms of oil and gas: Canadian tar sands, Venezuelan extra-heavy crude, shale oil and gas, Arctic and deep-offshore energy deposits, and other hydrocarbons derived from previously inaccessible reserves of energy. The explanation for this is simple enough. The world’s supply of conventional oil and gas -- fuels derived from easily accessible reservoirs and requiring a minimum of processing -- is rapidly disappearing. With global demand for fossil fuels expected to rise by 26% between now and 2035, more and more of the world’s energy supply will have to be provided by unconventional fuels.

In such a world, one thing is guaranteed: global carbon emissions will soar far beyond our current worst-case assumptions, meaning intense heat waves will become commonplace and our few remaining wilderness areas will be eviscerated. Planet Earth will be a far -- possibly unimaginably -- harsher and more blistering place. In that light, it’s worth exploring in greater depth just how we ended up in such a predicament, one carbon age at a time.

The First Carbon Era

The first carbon era began in the late 1800s, with the introduction of coal-powered steam engines and their widespread application to all manner of industrial enterprises. Initially used to power textile mills and industrial plants, coal was also employed in transportation (steam-powered ships and railroads), mining, and the large-scale production of iron. Indeed, what we now call the Industrial Revolution was largely comprised of the widening application of coal and steam power to productive activities. Eventually, coal would also be used to generate electricity, a field in which it remains dominant today.

This was the era in which vast armies of hard-pressed workers built continent-spanning railroads and mammoth textile mills as factory towns proliferated and cities grew. It was the era, above all, of the expansion of the British Empire. For a time, Great Britain was the biggest producer and consumer of coal, the world’s leading manufacturer, its top industrial innovator, and its dominant power -- and all of these attributes were inextricably connected. By mastering the technology of coal, a small island off the coast of Europe was able to accumulate vast wealth, develop the world’s most advanced weaponry, and control the global sea-lanes.

The same coal technology that gave Britain such global advantages also brought great misery in its wake. As noted by energy analyst Paul Roberts in The End of Oil, the coal then being consumed in England was of the brown lignite variety, “chock full of sulfur and other impurities.” When burned, “it produced an acrid, choking smoke that stung the eyes and lungs and blackened walls and clothes.” By the end of the nineteenth century, the air in London and other coal-powered cities was so polluted that “trees died, marble facades dissolved, and respiratory ailments became epidemic.”

For Great Britain and other early industrial powers, the substitution of oil and gas for coal was a godsend, allowing improved air quality, the restoration of cities, and a reduction in respiratory ailments. In many parts of the world, of course, the Age of Coal is not over. In China and India, among other places, coal remains the principal source of energy, condemning their cities and populations to a twenty-first-century version of nineteenth-century London and Manchester.

The Second Carbon Era

The Age of Oil got its start in 1859 when commercial production began in western Pennsylvania, but only truly took off after World War II, with the explosive growth of automobile ownership. Before 1940, oil played an important role in illumination and lubrication, among other applications, but remained subordinate to coal; after the war, oil became the world’s principal source of energy. From 10 million barrels per day in 1950, global consumption soared to 77 million in 2000, a half-century bacchanalia of fossil fuel burning.

Driving the global ascendancy of petroleum was its close association with the internal combustion engine (ICE). Due to oil’s superior portability and energy intensity (that is, the amount of energy it releases per unit of volume), it makes the ideal fuel for mobile, versatile ICEs. Just as coal rose to prominence by fueling steam engines, so oil came to prominence by fueling the world’s growing fleets of cars, trucks, planes, trains, and ships. Today, petroleum supplies about 97% of all energy used in transportation worldwide.

Oil’s prominence was also assured by its growing utilization in agriculture and warfare. In a relatively short period of time, oil-powered tractors and other agricultural machines replaced animals as the primary source of power on farms around the world. A similar transition occurred on the modern battlefield, with oil-powered tanks and planes replacing the cavalry as the main source of offensive power.

These were the years of mass automobile ownership, continent-spanning highways, endless suburbs, giant malls, cheap flights, mechanized agriculture, artificial fibers, and -- above all else -- the global expansion of American power. Because the United States possessed mammoth reserves of oil, was the first to master the technology of oil extraction and refining, and the most successful at utilizing petroleum in transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and war, it emerged as the richest and most powerful country of the twenty-first century, a saga told with great relish by energy historian Daniel Yergin in The Prize. Thanks to the technology of oil, the U.S. was able to accumulate staggering levels of wealth, deploy armies and military bases to every continent, and control the global air and sea-lanes -- extending its power to every corner of the planet.

However, just as Britain experienced negative consequences from its excessive reliance on coal, so the United States -- and the rest of the world -- has suffered in various ways from its reliance on oil. To ensure the safety of its overseas sources of supply, Washington has established tortuous relationships with foreign oil suppliers and has fought several costly, debilitating wars in the Persian Gulf region, a sordid history I recount in Blood and Oil. Overreliance on motor vehicles for personal and commercial transportation has left the country ill-equipped to deal with periodic supply disruptions and price spikes. Most of all, the vast increase in oil consumption -- here and elsewhere -- has produced a corresponding increase in carbon dioxide emissions, accelerating planetary warming (a process begun during the first carbon era) and exposing the country to the ever more devastating effects of climate change.

The Age of Unconventional Oil and Gas

The explosive growth of automotive and aviation travel, the suburbanization of significant parts of the planet, the mechanization of agriculture and warfare, the global supremacy of the United States, and the onset of climate change: these were the hallmarks of the exploitation of conventional petroleum. At present, most of the world’s oil is still obtained from a few hundred giant onshore fields in Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Russia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Venezuela, among other countries; some additional oil is acquired from offshore fields in the North Sea, the Gulf of Guinea, and the Gulf of Mexico. This oil comes out of the ground in liquid form and requires relatively little processing before being refined into commercial fuels.

But such conventional oil is disappearing. According to the IEA, the major fields that currently provide the lion’s share of global petroleum will lose two-thirds of their production over the next 25 years, with their net output plunging from 68 million barrels per day in 2009 to a mere 26 million barrels in 2035. The IEA assures us that new oil will be found to replace those lost supplies, but most of this will be of an unconventional nature. In the coming decades, unconventional oils will account for a growing share of the global petroleum inventory, eventually becoming our main source of supply.

The same is true for natural gas, the second most important source of world energy. The global supply of conventional gas, like conventional oil, is shrinking, and we are becoming increasingly dependent on unconventional sources of supply -- especially from the Arctic, the deep oceans, and shale rock via hydraulic fracturing.

In certain ways, unconventional hydrocarbons are akin to conventional fuels. Both are largely composed of hydrogen and carbon, and can be burned to produce heat and energy. But in time the differences between them will make an ever-greater difference to us. Unconventional fuels -- especially heavy oils and tar sands -- tend to possess a higher proportion of carbon to hydrogen than conventional oil, and so release more carbon dioxide when burned. Arctic and deep-offshore oil require more energy to extract, and so produce higher carbon emissions in their very production.

“Many new breeds of petroleum fuels are nothing like conventional oil,” Deborah Gordon, a specialist on the topic at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in 2012. “Unconventional oils tend to be heavy, complex, carbon laden, and locked up deep in the earth, tightly trapped between or bound to sand, tar, and rock.”

By far the most worrisome consequence of the distinctive nature of unconventional fuels is their extreme impact on the environment. Because they are often characterized by higher ratios of carbon to hydrogen, and generally require more energy to extract and be converted into usable materials, they produce more carbon dioxide emissions per unit of energy released. In addition, the process that produces shale gas, hailed as a “clean” fossil fuel, is believed by many scientists to cause widespread releases of methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

All of this means that, as the consumption of fossil fuels grows, increasing, not decreasing, amounts of CO2 and methane will be released into the atmosphere and, instead of slowing, global warming will speed up.

And here’s another problem associated with the third carbon age: the production of unconventional oil and gas turns out to require vast amounts of water -- for fracking operations, to extract tar sands and extra-heavy oil, and to facilitate the transport and refining of such fuels. This is producing a growing threat of water contamination, especially in areas of intense fracking and tar sands production, along with competition over access to water supplies among drillers, farmers, municipal water authorities, and others. As climate change intensifies, drought will become the norm in many areas and so this competition will only grow fiercer.

Along with these and other environmental impacts, the transition from conventional to unconventional fuels will have economic and geopolitical consequences hard to fully assess at this moment. As a start, the exploitation of unconventional oil and gas reserves from previously inaccessible regions involves the introduction of novel production technologies, including deep-sea and Arctic drilling, hydro-fracking, and tar-sands upgrading. One result has been a shakeup in the global energy industry, with the emergence of innovative companies possessing the skills and determination to exploit the new unconventional resources -- much as occurred during the early years of the petroleum era when new firms arose to exploit the world’s oil reserves.

This has been especially evident in the development of shale oil and gas. In many cases, the breakthrough technologies in this field were devised and deployed by smaller, risk-taking firms like Cabot Oil and Gas, Devon Energy Corporation, Mitchell Energy and Development Corporation, and XTO Energy. These and similar companies pioneered the use of hydro-fracking to extract oil and gas from shale formations in Arkansas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and Texas, and later sparked a stampede by larger energy firms to obtain stakes of their own in these areas. To augment those stakes, the giant firms are gobbling up many of the smaller and mid-sized ones. Among the most conspicuous takeovers was ExxonMobil’s 2009 purchase of XTO for $41 billion.

That deal highlights an especially worrisome feature of this new era: the deployment of massive funds by giant energy firms and their financial backers to acquire stakes in the production of unconventional forms of oil and gas -- in amounts far exceeding comparable investments in either conventional hydrocarbons or renewable energy. It’s clear that, for these companies, unconventional energy is the next big thing and, as among the most profitable firms in history, they are prepared to spend astronomical sums to ensure that they continue to be so. If this means investment in renewable energy is shortchanged, so be it. “Without a concerted policymaking effort” to favor the development of renewables, Carnegie’s Gordon warns, future investments in the energy field “will likely continue to flow disproportionately toward unconventional oil.”

In other words, there will be an increasingly entrenched institutional bias among energy firms, banks, lending agencies, and governments toward next-generation fossil-fuel production, only increasing the difficulty of establishing national and international curbs on carbon emissions. This is evident, for example, in the Obama administration’s undiminished support for deep-offshore drilling and shale gas development, despite its purported commitment to reduce carbon emissions. It is likewise evident in the growing international interest in the development of shale and heavy-oil reserves, even as fresh investment in green energy is being cut back.

As in the environmental and economic fields, the transition from conventional to unconventional oil and gas will have a substantial, if still largely undefined, impact on political and military affairs.

U.S. and Canadian companies are playing a decisive role in the development of many of the vital new unconventional fossil-fuel technologies; in addition, some of the world’s largest unconventional oil and gas reserves are located in North America. The effect of this is to bolster U.S. global power at the expense of rival energy producers like Russia and Venezuela, which face rising competition from North American companies, and energy-importing states like China and India, which lack the resources and technology to produce unconventional fuels.

At the same time, Washington appears more inclined to counter the rise of China by seeking to dominate the global sea lanes and bolster its military ties with regional allies like Australia, India, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. Many factors are contributing to this strategic shift, but from their statements it is clear enough that top American officials see it as stemming in significant part from America’s growing self-sufficiency in energy production and its early mastery of the latest production technologies.

“America’s new energy posture allows us to engage [the world] from a position of greater strength,” National Security Advisor Tom Donilon asserted in an April speech at Columbia University. “Increasing U.S. energy supplies act as a cushion that helps reduce our vulnerability to global supply disruptions [and] affords us a stronger hand in pursuing and implementing our international security goals.”

For the time being, the U.S. leaders can afford to boast of their “stronger hand” in world affairs, as no other country possesses the capabilities to exploit unconventional resources on such a large scale. By seeking to extract geopolitical benefits from a growing world reliance on such fuels, however, Washington inevitably invites countermoves of various sorts. Rival powers, fearful and resentful of its geopolitical assertiveness, will bolster their capacity to resist American power -- a trend already evident in China’s accelerating naval and missile buildup.

At the same time, other states will seek to develop their own capacity to exploit unconventional resources in what might be considered a fossil-fuels version of an arms race. This will require considerable effort, but such resources are widely distributed across the planet and in time other major producers of unconventional fuels are bound to emerge, challenging America’s advantage in this realm (even as they increase the staying power and global destructiveness of the third age of carbon). Sooner or later, much of international relations will revolve around these issues.

Surviving the Third Carbon Era

Barring unforeseen shifts in global policies and behavior, the world will become increasingly dependent on the exploitation of unconventional energy. This, in turn, means an increase in the buildup of greenhouse gases with little possibility of averting the onset of catastrophic climate effects. Yes, we will also witness progress in the development and installation of renewable forms of energy, but these will play a subordinate role to the development of unconventional oil and gas.

Life in the third carbon era will not be without its benefits. Those who rely on fossil fuels for transportation, heating, and the like can perhaps take comfort from the fact that oil and natural gas will not run out soon, as was predicted by many energy analysts in the early years of this century. Banks, the energy corporations, and other economic interests will undoubtedly amass staggering profits from the explosive expansion of the unconventional oil business and global increases in the consumption of these fuels. But most of us won’t be rewarded. Quite the opposite. Instead, we’ll experience the discomfort and suffering accompanying the heating of the planet, the scarcity of contested water supplies in many regions, and the evisceration of the natural landscape.

What can be done to cut short the third carbon era and avert the worst of these outcomes? Calling for greater investment in green energy is essential but insufficient at a moment when the powers that be are emphasizing the development of unconventional fuels. Campaigning for curbs on carbon emissions is necessary, but will undoubtedly prove problematic, given an increasingly deeply embedded institutional bias toward unconventional energy.

Needed, in addition to such efforts, is a drive to expose the distinctiveness and the dangers of unconventional energy and to demonize those who choose to invest in these fuels rather than their green alternatives. Some efforts of this sort are already underway, including student-initiated campaigns to persuade or compel college and university trustees to divest from any investments in fossil-fuel companies. These, however, still fall short of a systemic drive to identify and resist those responsible for our growing reliance on unconventional fuels.

For all President Obama’s talk of a green technology revolution, we remain deeply entrenched in a world dominated by fossil fuels, with the only true revolution now underway involving the shift from one class of such fuels to another. Without a doubt, this is a formula for global catastrophe. To survive this era, humanity must become much smarter about this new kind of energy and then take the steps necessary to compress the third carbon era and hasten in the Age of Renewables before we burn ourselves off this planet.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular, and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left, just published in paperback by Picador. A documentary movie based on his book Blood and Oil can be previewed and ordered at www.bloodandoilmovie.com. You can follow Klare on Facebook by clicking here.

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Copyright 2013 Michael Klare

The Case of Mike Roy and Bailey Lamon: Canadian Justice Follows US Lead

Official Statement from Mike Roy and Bailey Lamon

by Mike Roy and Bailey Lamon - The Indignants.org

To whom it may concern; our names are Mike Roy and Bailey Lamon, and we are students, activists and journalists in London, Ontario.

In the afternoon on Wednesday, July.24th, 2013, several police officers entered our apartment with a search warrant and aggressively arrested us as well as Bailey’s partner, Dan.

We were both charged with mischief and conspiracy to commit mischief, for allegedly painting on a brick in an alleyway, which read “I’m not just another brick in the wall”. All three of us were also charged with possession after a small amount of marijuana was found in the apartment.

At no point did the authorities sit down with us and explain why we were arrested, show us any evidence, or explain why there was a search warrant issued for a simple act of graffiti. Apparently this was not necessary.

We were both held in custody for several hours before being offered release under the conditions that we would not associate with one another, not have access to the internet or own a computer, camera or recording device of any kind (which implies that cell phones would also be forbidden). We were held overnight in the police station after refusing to sign the papers, and appeared before a justice of the peace the next afternoon. We were in custody for approximately 24 hours for again, an act of graffiti. When we returned home we found that our apartment was in ruins and the police had taken every computer, laptop, camera, external hard drive, cell phone and basically every data-storing device for the reason of possibly finding video footage of the graffiti taking place. We are university students as well as journalists who run a media organization, so this is extremely problematic for both of us. This equipment is an integral part of what we do to document and create awareness of positive activism in our community. It is also necessary to be able to aid and continue our academic studies.

Upon inquiring about if and when we could retrieve our possessions, we were told that it is not possible to even look into this until August.15th, when the investigating officer returns from his vacation. This is particularly bad for Bailey, as she still has school responsibilities from last semester that were delayed due to being hospitalized in April.

The reason we are sending this letter is because we do not believe that the arrests, raid on our apartment and seizing of possessions has anything to do with “graffiti” at all. We strongly believe that the “graffiti” charge is a scapegoat for a political targeting by the London Ontario Police Department due to our involvement in the Occupy movement as well as our continued involvement in activism through our media organization, The Indignants.

The Indignants are an independent alternative media team based out of London, Ontario, Canada. We identify as an anarchist collective and seek to fill in the gaps left by the mainstream corporate-controlled media and their lack of accurate representation at the community level.

We are here to help promote the voices of the oppressed, marginalized, and underrepresented. We make every effort to present our ideas within an anti-colonial and anti-oppression framework. It is our belief that we need to collectively develop a culture of intellectual self-defense to protect ourselves from manipulation and build a movement based on diversity of tactics, direct action, civil disobedience and participatory democracy.

We have many contributors and supporters from which we have formed a steering committee to democratically decide our direction.

We feel that we have been unfairly targeted as leaders of a group that operates in a horizontal democracy, as well as for our beliefs and activism in general. In constitutional terms, the attack by police and attempt to separate and silence us, is an infringement of our rights to association and expression. We need to create awareness of recent events and seek support from our community and allies. Thousands of dollars worth of equipment was taken by the police, all things that we need to continue our media work, academic studies, and to promote community outreach programs such as Food Not Bombs, Really Really Free Market and Critical Mass, among other things. We are asking for support in whatever way possible, including monetary donations so that we can get some new equipment and continue our work.

More information on how to donate can be found here: http://theindignants.org/donate/.

We realize that this may not be possible for everyone, so we also ask that you help us by spreading this message so that more are aware of our situation. Most importantly, we need to engage more heavily in the discussion about the criminalization of dissent and the behaviour of the police in London and all over Canada and the world. 

Thank you for your time and consideration in aiding our cause.

Mike Roy and Bailey Lamon.

Real History on the Atomic Bombing of Japan

68th Anniversary of Hiroshima & Nagasaki Bombing 

by TRNN

In our Untold History series, we speak with Peter Kuznick about the real message behind the 1945 dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th & 9th.

 

Peter Kuznick, Professor of History; Director, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute; Co-writer (with Oliver Stone) "Untold History of the United States"  

Is Thorium the "Clean" Nuclear Energy Solution?

The Thorium Reactor Energy Option

by Ray Grigg - Shades of Green

Nothing summarizes the nuclear power debacle better than the old adage, “...as we begin, so shall we go.” For half a century, the electrical power industry has been trying to make success of failure, safety of danger, and efficiency of wastefulness because it chose the wrong nuclear fuel to produce electricity from reactors. Instead of using thorium, it used uranium, and the economic, political and environmental costs of this mistake have been incalculable.

But “mistake” is technically not the correct word. The decision to use uranium rather than thorium was more a tragic misjudgment, a foolish choice based on the worst of reasons. At the end of World War II, the United States was flush with political and military power — and the atom bomb.

Uranium was the element that released the explosive power of this bomb, and it was the element favoured by the military because it produced the fissile plutonium needed for escalating the nuclear arms race that came to be called the Cold War. Prototypes of thorium reactors had been operated successfully and their safe production of electricity had already been demonstrated. This was the reactor favoured for commercial use by physicists like Alvin Weinberg, a thorium proponent (Superfuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source of the Future, by Richard Martin). But a proliferation of thorium reactors was opposed by military minds such as Hyman Rickover, an admiral in the US navy, who wanted to preserve the dominance of uranium reactors because its byproducts could be easily weaponized — not one of thorium's qualities. When the upper echelons of the military migrated to the corporations building nuclear reactors, they brought with them their preference for uranium, even though it was a far more unstable and dangerous fuel than thorium.

History has demonstrated this danger. The arms race effectively contaminated the energy equation so that we now have the worst of both possibilities. We have a planet loaded with nuclear bombs, massive amounts of persistent radioactive wastes, reactors capable of catastrophic meltdowns, unmanageable radioactive contamination, expensive power, terrorist threats, and weaponized political brinkmanship. We also have a continuing dependence on fossil fuels, the filthy and polluting energy that creates a host of its own messy problems.

Although most of the world's 400-plus uranium-powered nuclear power stations have produced electricity safely, the exceptions of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima Daiichi have been sufficiently traumatic to make the public wary of all nuclear power. The storage and disposal of radioactive wastes, far more plentiful and enduring than from thorium reactors, continue to be an unsolved problem.

Thorium reactors, their proponents argue, are far safer than uranium reactors, are incapable of melt-downs, are much cheaper to build (most of the construction costs of uranium-based reactors are in safety features), can be scaled down to fit the energy needs of small communities, need almost no maintenance, consume all their thorium fuel, would produce only 10 percent of uranium's radioactive wastes, and are even capable of utilizing existing uranium wastes as a supplemental fuel. Furthermore, thorium is about four times more plentiful than uranium and can be found almost anywhere (NewScientist, May 26/12).

The secret to thorium's safety is its reluctance to become fissile — nuclear science deems it “fertile” rather than “fissile”. Unlike uranium-235, which is neutron rich and unstable, thorium's emission of neutrons during radiation breakdown is termed “sub-critical”, not sufficiently plentiful to cause a chain reaction and an uncontrolled meltdown. To make thorium fissile enough to generate energy, neutrons must be forcibly added to it, so a simple safety feature that removes the neutron source causes a thorium reaction to die down. By using neutrons from the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of dangerous nuclear wastes created by the world's uranium-based reactors, thorium reactors could be designed to convert most of this waste to useful energy.

Given the present threat of global climate change from the excessive burning of fossil fuels for energy, thorium appears to be a tempting option in the world's energy equation. Thorium's radioactive wastes would be dangerous for a mere 200 years rather than the tens of thousands of years for uranium's wastes, and its byproducts would provide almost no fissile material for making bombs. China and India are now building models of thorium reactors with the intention of testing their promising capabilities.

The current candidate presented to the Department of Energy in the US is a so-called SSTAR thorium reactor, an acronym for “small, sealed, transportable, autonomous reactor”. It is a large cylinder about 3 metres in diameter by 15 metres long, weighing about 500 tonnes. The price for this 100 megawatt reactor could eventually be reduced to about $220 million, one-fifth the cost of a conventional uranium reactor. It would be moveable by truck, rail or ship, does not need containing walls, could be used safely within ordinary industrial buildings, or even be buried for 20-year periods without maintenance. Its size could be scaled down for specific uses — a 5 tonne thorium reactor of 1 megawatt output could provide power to a small town and cost as little as $250,000.

Thorium reactors may not be the perfect energy source. But, if we cannot find sufficient renewable power to fill the needs of our energy-hungry civilization, thorium reactors would be a far better alternative than uranium reactors, and preferable to unleashing the catastrophic environmental effects of burning fossil fuels.

Manning and the Moment for Us All to Seize Courage

The courage of Bradley Manning will inspire others to seize their moment of truth

by John Pilger

8 August 2013

The critical moment in the political trial of the century was on 28 February when Bradley Manning stood and explained why he had risked his life to leak tens of thousands of official files. It was a statement of morality, conscience and truth: the very qualities that distinguish human beings. This was not deemed mainstream news in America; and were it not for Alexa O'Brien, an independent freelance journalist, Manning's voice would have been silenced. Working through the night, she transcribed and released his every word. It is a rare, revealing document.

Describing the attack by an Apache helicopter crew who filmed civilians as they murdered and wounded them in Baghdad in 2007, Manning said: "The most alarming aspect of the video to me was the seemingly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have. They seemed not to value human life by referring to them as 'dead bastards' and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers. At one point in the video there is an individual on the ground attempting to crawl to safety [who] is seriously wounded... For me, this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass." He hoped "the public would be as alarmed as me" about a crime which, as his subsequent leaks revealed, was not an aberration.

Bradley Manning is a principled whistleblower and truth-teller who has been vilified and tortured - and Amnesty International needs to explain to the world why it has not adopted him as a prisoner of conscience; or is Amnesty, unlike Manning, intimidated by criminal power?

"It is a funeral here at Fort Meade," Alexa O'Brien told me. "The US government wants to bury Manning alive. He is a genuinely earnest young man with not an ounce of mendacity. The mainstream media finally came on the day of the verdict. They showed up for a gladiator match - to watch the gauntlet go down, thumbs pointed down."

The criminal nature of the American military is beyond dispute. The decades of lawless bombing, the use of poisonous weapons on civilian populations, the renditions and the torture at Abu Graib, Guantanamo and elsewhere, are all documented. As a young war reporter in Indochina, it dawned on me that America exported its homicidal neuroses and called it war, even a noble cause. Like the Apache attack, the infamous 1968 massacre at My Lai was not untypical. In the same province, Quang Ngai, I gathered evidence of widespread slaughter: thousands of men, women and children, murdered arbitrarily and anonymously in "free fire zones".

In Iraq, I filmed a shepherd whose brother and his entire family had been cut down by an American plane, in the open. This was sport. In Afghanistan, I filmed to a woman whose dirt-walled home, and family, had been obliterated by a 500lb bomb. There was no "enemy". My film cans burst with such evidence.

In 2010, Private Manning did his duty to the rest of humanity and supplied proof from within the murder machine. This is his triumph; and his show trial merely expresses corrupt power's abiding fear of people learning the truth. It also illuminates the parasitic industry around truth-tellers. Manning's character has been dissected and abused by those who never knew him yet claim to support him.

The hyped film, We Steal Secrets: the Story of WikiLeaks, mutates a heroic young soldier into an "alienated... lonely... very needy" psychiatric case with an "identity crisis" because "he was in the wrong body and wanted to become a woman". So spoke Alex Gibney, the director, whose prurient psycho-babble found willing ears across a media too compliant or lazy or stupid to challenge the hype and comprehend that the shadows falling across whistleblowers may reach even them. From its dishonest title, Gibney's film performed a dutiful hatchet job on Manning, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. The message was familiar - serious dissenters are freaks. Alexa O'Brien's meticulous record of Manning's moral and political courage demolishes this smear.

In the Gibney film, US politicians and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff are lined up to repeat, unchallenged, that, in publishing Manning's leaks, WikiLeaks and Assange placed the lives informants at risk and had "blood on his hands". On 1 August, the Guardian reported: "No record of deaths caused by WikiLeaks revelations, court told." The Pentagon general who led a 10-month investigation into the worldwide impact of the leaks reported that not a single death could be attributed to the disclosures.

Yet, in the film, the journalist Nick Davies describes a heartless Assange who had no "harm minimisation plan". I asked the film-maker Mark Davis about this. A respected broadcaster for SBS Australia, Davis was an eyewitness, accompanying Assange during much of the preparation of the leaked files for publication in the Guardian and the New York Times. His footage appears in the Gibney film. He told me, "Assange was the only one who worked day and night extracting 10,000 names of people who could be targeted by the revelations in the logs."

While Manning faces life in prison, Gibney is said to be planning a Hollywood movie. A "biopic" of Assange is on the way, along with a Hollywood version of David Leigh's and Luke Harding's book of scuttlebutt on the "fall" of WikiLeaks. Profiting from the boldness, cleverness and suffering of those who refuse to be co-opted and tamed, they all will end up in history's waste bin. For the inspiration of future truth-tellers belongs to Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and the remarkable young people of WikiLeaks, whose achievements are unparalleled. Snowden's rescue is largely a WikiLeaks triumph: a thriller too good for Hollywood because its heroes are real.

This article first appeared in the New Statesman
Follow John Pilger on twitter @johnpilger

Disaster in Paradise: Sliming the Slocan

Slocan Valley Resident Recounts Disaster in Paradise

by Nelle Maxey - The Canadian.org

It was a beautiful day.

The day was Friday July 26. It was just like any other sunny summer day in the Slocan Valley, located in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia 650 kilometres east of Vancouver.

It was the height of the tourist season. Bed and breakfasts, restaurants, and retail stores were were swollen with visitors. Kayaks, canoes, rafts and tubes filled the Slocan River as swimmers cooled themselves at public and private beaches along the river. Others were in their gardens, assessing if the beans were ready for canning and the garlic ready for digging. People picked raspberries and blueberries from the loaded bushes, dug potatoes, plucked zucchini, and lettuce for dinner. It was a bumper year for gardens in the valley. Farmers were in their fields cutting hay. Market gardeners and local greenhouses irrigated their crops and picked produce to sell.

All this of course was normal. What wasn’t normal, however, was the drone of helicopters flying over the Slocan Valley’s Winlaw area, dumping water scooped from the river on the two-day old Perry Ridge fire.

Then disaster struck the Slocan Valley.

At about 1:30 p.m., a large tanker truck delivering jet fuel for the Ministry of Forests fire-fighting helicopters tumbled into Lemon Creek and dumped 33,000 litres of jet fuel into the swift-flowing creek which joins the Slocan River downstream of the spill.

The driver was on the wrong road. If the driver was on the right road, they would have used Uris Road north of the Lemon Creek bridge. The tanker was on Lemon Creek Road south of the bridge. This stretch of road is a narrow, decommissioned logging road that had been closed to traffic due to slides and crumbling banks.

In the official record of what happen, one report says the driver was to meet forestry personnel who would direct them to the helicopter staging area. This never happened. Instead, the driver proceeded on his own up Lemon Creek Road, past two signs that indicated the road was closed, and eventually found a place to turn around and was on his way back down to Highway 6 when a road bank gave way under the weight of the tanker.

The driver, not seriously injured after the accident, scrambled up the 15-foot bank and walked the 6 kilometres back to Highway 6 where a passing vehicle picked him up so he could report the accident. RCMP arrived on the scene at approximately 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon, although the fumes were so bad they could not approach the area. Once it was confirmed the truck was carrying jet fuel, the Interior Health Authority was notified at 6 p.m. on Friday evening. A few hours later, the first evacuation order was issued for 800 residents within 300 meters of Lemon Creek and the Slocan River for 3 kilometres upstream and downstream of the spill. It took many hours before the volunteer firemen and search and rescue teams could be organized to notify residents of the evacuation order. The first phone calls went out around midnight with volunteers going door-to-door in the most affected areas.

Meanwhile back at the spill site, officials estimate the tanker released the 33,000 litres of fuel in about 40 minutes. The fuel slick reached the Winlaw Bridge sometime around 6 p.m. (about the same time the local health authority was notified of the accident). Children swimming in the river near Appledale just north of Winlaw were later reported to have skin rashes. People who were canoeing in the area also reported health effects. Residents along the river between Winlaw and Lemon Creek reported that the smell was so strong by 5 p.m. that they closed up their homes and left the area. Within 24 hours of the accident the slick had traveled 60 kilometres: down the Slocan River, then into the Kootenay River to just above of the Brilliant Hydroelectric Dam at Castlegar. The first boom to stop the slick was established there on Saturday afternoon.

The plume was 2 to 3 kilometres long and 30 to 50 metres wide. A Ministry of Environment spokesperson said a boom was put in place at about 1:30 p.m. on Saturday just above the Brilliant Dam. The spokesperson said the boom’s effectiveness in containing the fuel was being monitored. Officials didn’t know at this time if fuel had entered the dam works.

The evacuation

Within hours of the first evacuation notice issued by the Interior Health Authority, the evacuation was expanded to include everyone in the valley. Anyone living within a 3 kilometre radius of the river between Lemon Creek and Playmore Junction (where Hwy 6 joins Hwy 3 to Nelson and Castlegar) were to evacuate. This affected 2,500 residences. As the fuel progressed down the river, health authorities had become worried sleeping people would not smell the fuel.

People with emergency services and volunteer fire departments began making phone calls and knocking on doors. The evacuation order included a "Do Not Use Water" order to “all users of water supplies within 10 kilometers downstream of the spill." Later, the wording of the order changed to suggest water wells were okay to use. This was revised again to say shallow wells near the river might be affected. Today, a week after the accident the order explains that if your creek surface water or well water doesn’t smell like jet fuel, then it’s okay to use. Essentially, a smell test was the only test for private water supplies that didn't originate from the rivers or Lemon Creek. The evacuation order also contained the following statement: “Jet fuel poses an immediate health risk to people. Exposure can burn skin, inhalation can harm respiratory systems and may cause brain damage. It is also dangerous to consume.”

The boundaries of the evacuation and a timeline of events are shown here:

Fifty volunteer fire fighters from the four valley fire departments worked overnight and into Saturday to notify residents of the evacuation. Even though they had help, they concentrated on people closest to the river and spill site. They notified over 800 residents in all. Much of the notification went by word of mouth to neighbours, family and friends, all of which took place at night. Many residents in the north end of the valley left even before the order was issued due to the heavy concentration of fumes.

By noon on Saturday, the fumes had dissipated enough to lift the evacuation order. Residents trickled back into the valley all day Saturday. Unfortunately, at the north end of the valley some people returned to homes that were saturated with the smell of fuel. Even people’s gardens and hay fields were contaminated, not to mention the watering tanks for livestock had a layer of fuel on top of the water.

By this time, people in the valley settled down and most residents assumed the scare was over. Then the town hall meeting was held.

Many questions, few answers

On July 30, hundreds of residents from all areas of the valley jammed Winlaw Hall for a meeting to hear presentations from local government officials, provincial authorities and employees from the company involved. The meeting was not well organized. The handouts did not contain contact information or the names of the speakers. At first, many residents did not have their questions answered as they were told they were not on topic. Then the format was changed and residents were allowed to ask questions of any panellist. Many questions required responses from multiple panellists.



The health official immediately declared the serious nature of this event and explained the reasons for the evacuation. Though benzene was not a component of the jet fuel spilled in the creek, kerosene was a component and is dangerous by skin contact or ingestion. This applies to humans and animals. Aquatic life is at special risk as the specific type of fuel spilled (Jet Fuel A1) is listed to have a chronic toxic effect on aquatic ecosystems.

Residents were informed the "Do Not Use Water" order would stay in effect for 5 to 10 days at a minimum. The order applied to recreation in the river as well as water use from the river and Lemon Creek. All such water systems should be shut down so the contaminated water is not drawn into pipes and hot water heaters. Other surface water users from the creeks not affected directly should use their own judgement and apply the “smell test” to their water. Deep wells were unlikely to be affected. Shallow wells along the river should not be used as they may be contaminated.

This was the first time some residents heard the information about shallow wells and surface creeks. Individual water licence holders or well owners would not receive assistance to have their water tested. Registered purveyors on water systems with more than two users could receive assistance to have water testing done. Residents were also told to wash all vegetables 3 times for 3 minutes before use with potable water (a Catch-22 for residents without potable water supplies), and were also told not to buy local produce.

As residents poured into the line-up for the mic and began asking questions and sharing their stories, the consequences of the spill and the fact that little help had been available were becoming more apparent. The problems associated with the spill were most severe at the north end of the valley, from Lemon Creek to Winlaw. Homes were contaminated with the fuel smell. Fruit trees and vegetables were contaminated. Hay fields and pastures were contaminated. No water was available for livestock, poultry or gardens.

Many people were without any water for drinking, washing dishes, flushing toilets or showering. Similar water problems prevailed all along the river to the lower valley - especially contaminated hay and pastures, no water for gardens and livestock, as well as difficulty hauling enough water from potable water tank stations for resident needs. The meeting was held five days after the spill and potable water tanks had been set up in four locations in the valley only on the day of the meeting.

As of Saturday, August 3, the water and the rocks in Lemon Creek still smelled of jet fuel. There was a sheen visible and emulsion (milky-looking jet fuel and water mix) under rocks in the creek at the Lemon Creek bridge on Hwy 6. The road has been remediated just before the accident site where fuel spilled from the tanker. There is no fuel on the road at the actual location where the truck went off. There is water from seeps in the rock face running across the road at that location. You can see this water in published photographs. Workers at the site agreed that the water run-off contributed to weakening the bank that collapsed under the truc, resulting in the fuel spill.

Recent developments

Until further notice, a "Do Not Use" order for drinking water and recreational use remains in effect for Lemon Creek, Slocan River and Kootenay River above and below Brilliant Dam. Fuel is still visible in the containment booms and along the shoreline.

Garden vegetables, fruit, eggs, and dairy milk that were contacted by the fuel vapor are SAFE to consume as long as they do not smell like fuel or have a fuel sheen. Interior Health is advising residents to thoroughly wash fruit and vegetables with alternate water sources to remove any dirt and debris prior to consumption. Food products that have been irrigated with contaminated water AND smell like fuel should be discarded.
Approximately 1,000 litres of contaminated material has been recovered.

RCMP have issued Vessel Operating Restrictions for the Slocan River from Lemon Creek to the Kootenay River, which will be lifted when the clean-up has been completed.

The smell of jet fuel is still apparent in the Lemon Creek area and responders equipped with gas monitors have been testing the air quality outside residences close to the spill site.

Many residents in the valley are still waiting for promised testing.

A Resiliency Centre is being established at the Winlaw Elementary School to support residents with shower, lavatory and emergency support services. It is expected to open within the next couple of days.
Polaris Applied Sciences from Kirkland, Washington was hired to conduct a Shoreline Clean-up and Assessment Technique, or SCAT. Leading the SCAT team is Polaris principal, Dr. Elliott Taylor, a world-renowned expert in spill clean-up operations. The assessment is underway and is already providing additional information which is helping to clean up the waterways by providing operational focus to the response teams and prioritizing where we focus our attention.

Light “flushing” activities are being conducted to free product (Jet Fuel A1 / without additives) from stream banks and vegetation to make it available for collection. Nearly 1,000 metres of containment boom has been deployed throughout the Slocan River system and it is capturing any free-flowing product. The product is being skimmed off the water into a vacuum truck and removed to a licensed waste facility. In areas where soil is impacted, the soil is being removed and trucked to a separate licensed waste facility. A significant amount of contaminated water and soil was recovered.

Experts continue to collect water samples, sediment samples, and fish and wildlife from the impacted water courses. Wildlife mortalities to date have been collected and sent to the laboratory for analysis.
Water quality test results are being sent to the Interior Health Authority to assist in making a decision on when the "Do Not Use Water" order may be lifted.

Responders equipped with gas monitors have been testing the air quality throughout the area of potential and observed influence. To date, atmospheric concentrations have been within established government standards; however, the smell of jet fuel is still occasionally apparent.

 

Where's the Fish, Where's the Whales?

Where Are The Whales?

by Orca Watcher

It's a question we island residents patiently put up with from May through September, the best time of year to see whales in local waters. Second only to, "What time do the whales come by?" the question "Where are the whales?" is a common one from not just tourists, but also among researchers, boat captains, naturalists, and all members of the whale-watch community. Often, the answer to the question in the summer months is something like "On the west side of San Juan Island" or "Swimming past Victoria" or "Near the mouth of the Fraser River by Vancouver, BC". The eighty-plus members of the Southern Resident Community of killer whales can travel up to a hundred miles a day, and without any of the animals being tagged it's visual spotting that finds them on a day-to-day basis. Despite a fleet of dozens of whale-watching vessels looking for whales during about 12 hours of every summer day, every morning it's sort of a whole new ballgame as to where they will show up after a nighttime's worth of traveling. More often than not in the summer months, they're somewhere within the Salish Sea, just taking occasional forays out the Strait of Juan de Fuca to the open ocean.

This year, however, the question, "Where are the whales?" has taken on a different meaning among the whale watch community. It's not just a curious question among hopeful whale watchers trying to track the movements of J-, K-, and L-Pods. It's a sadder, more anxious question this year because, quite simply, the whales aren't here.

It's true we've seen all members of all three pods in inland waters this season, but among those of us that watch these whales year after year, the consensus is something different is going on this year. They came back later than usual. They've been spending less time here. For a couple of bizarre weeks, the only whales here were the three members of the L22 matriline, something that has never happened before. But a hunch or anecdotal evidence isn't enough to prove something different is going on. Where's the data?

April and May used to be considered good whale-watching months here in the Salish Sea. According to The Whale Museum's Orca Master data set, from 1978 to 2008, members of at least one of the three pods of Southern Residents were documented in inland waters in every single month of every single year. Often, this may have just been for one day, but some years J-Pod was around nearly every day in the spring. In 2009, for the first time on record, there were no sightings in the month of April. J-Pod returned on May 4th of that year. This year, again, there were no resident killer whales in the month of April and beyond until Js returned on May 15th. It was definitely a late return, but what's been going on since then?

Dr. Bob Otis, now a retired professor from Ripon College, has been collecting killer whale data at Lime Kiln Lighthouse for 23 years. Every year, from May 20th to August 10th, between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM, he and his team of interns records data on every group of killer whales that passes within half of a mile of the lighthouse in any direction. While his data of course doesn't fully document every time the whales are in inland waters, it's a valuable long-term data set collected in the heart of the summer range of the Southern Residents, and its consistent collection provides a reliable benchmark. Bob generously provided me with his data, from which I extracted the following information showing the number of "whale days" between May 20 and July 27th (today) for each of the last 23 years. (A "whale day" is defined as any day when killer whales passed by Lime Kiln between the hours of 9 AM and 5 PM.) Click the chart to see a larger version.



The 17 whale days so far this year are by far the lowest since Bob started collecting data in 1990. In fact, it's less than half of the 20+ year average of 40 whale days (red line) in this time period and 12 days lower than any year on record.


So why haven't you been hearing about this? I've been asking myself the same question. The truth is, the whale-watching industry hasn't really suffered *too* much as a result of the lack of Southern Residents. The transient, marine mammal eating killer whales that are distant cousins of the fish-eating Southern Residents have been thriving, perhaps benefiting from a boon of the local harbor seal and Steller sea lion populations. I remember when I first started watching whales here, transients seemed like elusive creatures to me. It took years before I saw my first one. Now, I see them several times a year just from shore on San Juan Island, and the whale watch boats see them almost daily during certain times of year. Transients have been getting a lot of good press lately, including being on the cover of a recent edition of the Seattle Times after wowing viewers right off the docks of Liberty Bay deep in Puget Sound, not far from downtown Seattle. The article mentions the Southern Residents, but says nothing about their scarcity this summer.

The sporadic transient orcas are still not a sure bet, but in addition there have been more humpback whales than usual, an abundance of lunge-feeding minke whales, lots of harbor seals with brand new pups, and fledgling bald eagles to help keep the tour companies occupied. I've heard it been suggested that local press may be staying away from the issue of the "missing" resident whales out of fear of driving away the tourists who flock here to see them. But there's no doubt in my mind: this is an issue that needs to be talked about.

More importantly than why it hasn't received more press is the underlying question of why the whales aren't here in the first place. The answer is most likely an obvious one: there's no fish here for them to eat.

Killer whales were formally thought of as generalist feeders as the species as a whole has been documented feeding on over 50 prey species. We now know that the Orcinus orca species is really a species complex made up of various ecotytpes of killer whales, each population specializing on a smaller subset of prey species. The Southern Residents have long been known to be fish eaters with a preference for salmon. In particular, they like Chinook salmon. Recent prey studies, like those conducted by Brad Hanson of NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center, have shown just how strong this dietary specialization is. From genetic evidence from prey samples taken in the San Juan Islands, Brad's research team has found that not only do the Southern Residents preferentially feed on Chinook (despite being most likely to encounter pink, sockeye, and chum salmon), but they specifically feed heavily on Fraser River Chinook in June through August. The Fraser River, the longest river in British Columbia, enters the Salish Sea not far from the city of Vancouver and is one of the largest salmon-producing rivers in the region. Brad and other researchers have also conducted genetic analysis of fecal samples from the whales to help determine diet - in these studies, which look at percent composition of different prey species in the samples as opposed to frequency of occurrence with which the prey item is taken, Fraser Chinook dominate the diet by an even stronger ratio.

If you talk to a local salmon fisherman, they'll probably tell you the fishing has been great so far this year. The salmon are abundant right now, it's true - but they're pink salmon, the smallest of the local salmonid species. The residents probably preferentially feed on Chinook because they get the most bang for their buck: Chinook are the largest, fattiest salmon species. In the fall the whales switch to chum, the next largest species, but from genetic analysis of fecal samples, it doesn't look like the whales eat sockeye or pink salmon at all.

So how are those all-important Fraser River Chinook salmon runs doing this year? It's not a pretty picture. Here's the data from the Albion test fishery near Fort Langley on the lower Fraser, which is able to monitor fish stocks returning to different regions of the river. This first chart shows the catch data (CPUE = catch per unit effort) through July 22 compared to the yearly average from 1981-2012:





The picture is even more striking when you look at the cumulative catch per unit effort from this year compared to the average over the same time period (taking note that unlike most years data was not taken this year from April 1-20 - but that seems to be a small contributor to the cumulative total):





So, with the salmon clearly not here, it's perhaps not such a surprise the whales are not here either. The question still stands, however: where are they?


There have been a few reports over the last few months of the Southern Residents off Tofino on the central west coast of Vancouver Island. Since the whales haven't looked particularly emaciated (to me) when they have been here, we can only assume (hope?) that they're finding an abundance of Chinook wherever they are hanging out, somewhere out in the open ocean. It sucks that we aren't able to see them more, but really what's most important is that they're finding enough to eat. As an admittedly potentially unrelated side note, we have yet to see any new calves born to any whale in any pod in 2013.

A fair question, too, is why the residents don't switch to eating pink salmon or other species when the Chinook are not abundant. The answer is a complicated one, but my best guess is that these highly social animals are extremely culturally rigid. Despite the stresses this population has been under from events like the live capture era (which resulted in maybe a third of the population being removed) they don't stretch their social associations to include transients, or offshores, or even Northern Residents. It seems no matter what happens, they will only associate with their own kind. There is also some kind of treaty, if you can call it that, in place that divides up the food sources, giving the two co-existing populations different shares of the food web: marine mammals for transients and fish for residents. They don't seem likely to break this treaty, even when it's a matter of survival, and it seems the rules are even more severe than we first thought, as not only will they not eat mammals but they won't even settle for less than Chinook salmon. One can only hope we don't find out what happens when we, as humans, push the Southern Residents to their cultural limits. They shouldn't have to choose (they may not be able to choose) between tradition and survival.

In the meantime, all I can do is witness what I see before me: that the whales are not here like they usually are this time of year. Witness, and pass on my observations to you, which hopefully you will then share with others. It's easy to gloss over this storyline because it's true, it's not a happy one. But that doesn't make it any less important to talk about.

What Can We Understand of the Foment in the Arab Lands?

The Arab Turmoil: Where Do We Stand?

by Ramzy Baroud - PalestineChronicle.com

Seasons come and go, yet Arab countries are in ongoing turmoil. They called it an ‘Arab Spring’, but even if that ‘spring’ had ever existed in the shape and form that the media portrayed it to be, it never really lasted. It has now morphed into something far more complex.

But it is not an ‘Islamic winter’ either, a foreboding term favored by Israeli policymakers and analysts. The Islamic dimension of Arab rebellions - some of which turned into bloody civil and regional wars - should have been palpable from the very start to anyone who cares to understand political reality beyond its usefulness as a propaganda tool. Islam has and will always be a component in shaping collective cognizance of Arab nations. Political Islam moved to the heart of the ongoing strife and was a manifestation of a century-long struggle where Islam was a platform of political expression, governance and jurisprudence that has fought against many imported and western-styled trends.

Throughout the years, there has not been one successful union between Islam and Arab ruling classes – successful in the sense that it contributed to progress, rights, and prosperity for all. Islamists were either co-opted or conflict reigned. The atrociousness of the results of these conflicts varied depending on how clever Arab rulers were in their management. In Jordan, low-level discord has always existed between Islamic opposition parties and the ruling class. It teetered between partial inclusion of Islamic forces in a parliament that operated with little authority and occasional spats or political crises of little consequence.

However, not all failed experiments came at a relatively low cost. In Algeria, an attempt at harmonization went terribly wrong. The 1991 Algerian civil war lasted for over a decade and resulted in the death of up to 200,000 people. Things were not meant to be so bloody, as it had begun with something rather promising: an election. The ruling National Liberation Front (FLN) canceled elections after the first round, fearing what seemed like an assured loss at the hands of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS). The promise turned into Algeria’s second worst nightmare, the first being its even bloodier struggle for liberation from colonial France.

All ingredients were in place for a complete disaster. There was a strong army running the country through a deeply enriched ruling party, an emboldened political opposition that was about to achieve political power using the ballot box, and a thoroughly frustrated public eager to move beyond the tired slogans and economic disenfranchisement. Additionally, a radicalized generation of youth existed as they had serious doubts about the sincerity of the ruling class in the first place. The canceling of the elections was the final straw, and bloodletting seemed as though it were the only common denominator. Even now, Algeria is still entrapped by the consequences of that very conflict as it sits at a political standstill without much of a roadmap to anywhere.

Despite one’s insistence to evade generalizations, knowing how some media tend to lump all Arabs and Muslims into one convenient discourse, the similarities between the Algerian and Egyptian experiences are simply uncanny.

On January 25, 2011, Egyptians revolted with the hope that they could finally break the chokehold of the ruling elites: The National Democratic Party, with its adjoining business class and the army, which operates its own massive economy within the larger, haggard, Egyptian economy.

But by extension, the revolution could have targeted the larger regional and international conglomerate that aided and abetted the Hosni Mubarak regime and his massively corrupt power apparatus. Indeed, without an elaborate benefactors’ network, the United States being in the lead, Mubarak would have never managed to sustain his reign for over three decades. Egyptians however barely had the time or the resources to develop much of a foreign policy agenda, as their revolution faced too many obstacles and decided attempts at sabotage.

On one hand the army was still in charge, although it branded itself as if it were the guardian of the nation and its revolution by using the same old corrupt media. On the other, there was never a cohesive structure that would allow Egyptians to translate their collective aspiration into anything tangible. The only available forum was that of elections and referendums, and every single one was squarely and democratically won by Islamic parties. Fair and transparent elections maybe, but their results allowed the Mubarak regime to resurface.

Using its never dismantled infrastructure, notwithstanding a most corrupt media owned by powerful businessmen, and with the army playing a dubious role, the old regime managed to turn the revolution against itself. It cleverly sold the June 30, 2013 protests as if they were a call to correct the wrong path taken after the January 25, 2011 revolt. In a strange turn of events, millions of those who protested against Mubarak were back protesting against democratically-elected Mohammed Morsi, allying with the very political forces that wrecked the country for many years, calling on the same army, and siding with the ‘baltajiya’ – thugs who terrorized protesters merely two and half years ago.

Egypt is now taking its first steps towards becoming another Algeria during the civil war. Do the coup leaders truly understand the repercussions of what they have done?

Tunisia, that small nation that inspired the world in Dec. 2010, is not far behind in that sad saga. A recent assassination, this time of nationalist politician Mohamed Brahmi, followed an earlier assassination of another high profiled politician, Chokri Belaid. Tunisia stands divided between those who want to topple the government, and those who insist on its democratic right to govern. Either way, there is no doubt that some suspect hands are trying to push Tunisia into an abyss that is being marketed as Islamists vs. secularists.

Syria has been the most bloody example by far. Although in the Syrian civil war, the stakes quickly became much higher, and along with the pertaining discussion, the war rapidly took on a dangerous sectarian conflict whose implications are felt near and far.

In some sad way, the Arab regimes are making gains. Some are doing so through war, others through military coups, and some are actively plotting in hopes of making their move soon.

As costly as it has been, one thing is for sure, the old Middle East paradigm, of powerful elites backed by formidable allies, oppressing weak, dismissible peoples, is unlikely to be resurrected. There will be more blood, but a return to the past is surely a thing of the past.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press).

Hopeless: American Militarism Standing Between Korean Unification

Obama’s Militaristic Tilt in Korea

by Tim Shorrock - The Nation

Seoul, Korea - On July 27, I visited the Korean DMZ with a group of peace activists from Japan, China and South Korea. We were there to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the armistice that ended the Korean War and participate in a conference seeking a permanent peace agreement between the warring parties. The events were organized by the Unified Progressive Party, a coalition of labor and civil liberties activists that holds six seats in South Korea’s National Assembly.

To many Koreans, a peace agreement is the only solution to the tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and the massive US-South Korean military exercises that have sparked the last two crises on the divided peninsula. “We are on the brink of war at any time,” warned Kyoung-Soon Park, the vice president of the UPP’s Progressive Policy Institute. “We are ashamed that the armistice, which just means the end of hostilities, has dragged on for 60 years.”

The atmosphere in Washington that day couldn’t have been more different. Twelve hours after the gathering on the DMZ, President Obama became the first US president to attend the official armistice commemorations at the Korean War Memorial. Addressing a phalanx of US and South Korean generals and hundreds of veterans, he delivered one of the most militaristic speeches of his presidency. “Here, today, we can say with confidence that this war was no tie,” he declared. “Korea was a victory.”

Obama ended on a note of hubris, pledging that “the United States of America will maintain the strongest military the world has ever known, bar none, always. That is what we do.” Not once did he mention the fact that, for both North and South Korea, national unification has been a cherished -- albeit distant -- goal since 1972, when the Kim Il Sung and Park Chung Hee governments first laid out the principles for unification.

Obama’s embrace of the term “victory” marks a sharp and disturbing turn in US policy towards Korea. The Korean War, which has its roots in the tragic division imposed by the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II, was one of the most brutal conflicts of the twentieth century. It ended where it began in 1950, with the two sides bitterly divided. It also left the country a shattered ruin; North Korea was literally bombed into cinders by the US Air Force. In the end, 38,000 Americans, 180,000 Chinese and 3 million Koreans died.

For decades, US officials and historians described the war not as a victory but a frustrating, inconclusive “police action.” And because China’s entry into the war stopped President Truman’s foolish attempt to “roll back” communism in the North, many conservatives portrayed the conflict as a disastrous reversal of US power and prestige. But as the cold war drew to a close, right-wing historians began lauding the Korean War as a “victory,” arguing -- as Obama did on Saturday -- that South Korea’s rise as a capitalist powerhouse and, eventually, as a democracy, were huge wins for the United States.

One of the earliest proponents of that view was David Frum, the conservative intellectual who served as a key adviser to President George W. Bush. Speaking on PBS in 1991, he declared that the “victory in Korea” opened “a new epic in the history of civilization” in which “the Pacific Rim joined the developed world.” That brought a withering response from Bruce Cumings, the foremost American historian on the war. Not only did North Korea and China “not surrender,” he said, “they gave the United States the most punishing defeat that it suffered in the post war period.” The war, he concluded, “was clearly a stalemate.” Few people knowledgeable about the country would disagree.

Therein lies the essential divide between current US policy and South Korea’s peace and justice movement. Obama and the Pentagon hold that Kim Jong Un’s North Korea is the greatest threat to peace in Asia and insists that the only deterrence is the joint exercises they conduct every year. But many in Seoul argue that the war games -- which recently included the deployment of nuclear-ready stealth B-2 and F-22 bombers to the peninsula -- are driving the North into a dangerous offensive posture that could easily end in another catastrophe. They describe the US posture towards the North not as peace-keeping but as part of a global strategy to expand US military influence and control.

“Although the US stationed its military forces in Korea as a counter measure against the invasion of North Korea, its role has changed into a swift expeditionary strike force targeting East Asia as well as the Middle East,” declared feminist lawyer Jung-Hee Lee, the UPP’s chairperson and one of two candidates to challenge South Korean President Park Geun-hye -- the daughter of the former president -- in the 2012 national elections. “Our challenge is to create a stable peace system now.”

Lee’s party and many activists here want to return to the years of reconciliation with Pyongyang that marked the “Sunshine” diplomacy promoted by the liberal governments of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo Hyun. Both men were champions of the Korean democracy movement and, during their twelve years in office, reached significant agreements with the North. They included extensive diplomatic and cultural exchanges, the construction of a North-South railway line and development of a joint industrial zone that North Korea shut down during the recent crisis in April.

But the Obama administration has flatly rejected the idea of negotiating with the North without a prior commitment to denuclearization and expressed no interest in a peace agreement. And in August, US and South Korean forces will commence another round of war games. Rather than get the United States embroiled in another war, Obama should consider canceling, or scaling down, those exercises and talking peace for a change. The South Korean democracy movement endured nearly forty years of a military dictatorship backed and supported by the United States. Supporting their campaign for reconciliation is the least we can do for a country that has seen enough of the horrors of war.

Tim Shorrock, who has been contributing to The Nation since 1983, is the author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.

Copyright © 2013 The Nation

The War on Farms Continues in Gaza

Army Invades Central Gaza

by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies

Local sources have reported that several armored Israeli military vehicles and military bulldozers, carried out a limited invasion into the Al-Boreij refugee camp, in central Gaza, and uprooted farmlands.

The sources said that six military bulldozers, accompanied by several jeeps, invaded the area, and fired several rounds of live ammunition before uprooting the lands.

The bulldozers and armored vehicles also invaded an area close to the Juhr Ed-Deen nearby village.

The army carries out nearby daily limited invasion into different areas of the coastal region, especially border areas in the northern and eastern parts of the Gaza Strip. Dozens of casualties have been reported due to army fire during these invasions.

The invasions are direct violations to the ceasefire agreement mediated by Egypt, in November of last year, between the resistance in Gaza and Tel Aviv.

Back into the Breach: Washington Playing Peacemaker in Palestine Again

Washington Acts Like Matchmaker… Between Rapist and Victim

by Finian Cunningham  - (SCF)

After two days of intercourse in Washington between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators, US Secretary of State John Kerry emerged like a benevolent matchmaker satisfied that his efforts at brokering a marriage of sorts had at last borne fruit.

Kerry announced that the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams had agreed to begin (once again) earnest talks to deliver on a final peace settlement that would deal with all outstanding "final status issues". Kerry said the next round of negotiations is scheduled to finish after a period of nine months.

The gestation period of nine months is no doubt a random number. But it does invite comparison to an expectant birth. Unfortunately, we can say with near certainty that the end result will be stillborn. History tells us so.

Every White House administration from President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s through to the present has stepped forward periodically to herald an imminent "just peace" between Palestinians and Israelis; and every time, cruelly, this promise comes to nothing. Well, actually, it does come to something: the territories and rights of the Palestinians are continually ravaged and diminished as the violations of the Israeli state inexorably expand…

One of modern history’s longest conflicts has festered and metastasized for decades because of this fundamental problem: the United States is not an honest broker in the quest for a just peace. Washington is part of the problem. John Kerry, like so many of his predecessors, may pose as an even-handed matchmaker between two quarrelling sides. But the simple fact is that the US is not a neutral arbiter. It is the patron, sponsor, architect, advocate and accomplice of one side – Israel.

In coaxing the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, Secretary Kerry reportedly dangled the lure of $4 billion in private investments to the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas. But we have to put that incentive in perspective. This is the amount of financial and military aid that Washington has been plying Israel with every year for decades.

At the opening of the "talks about talks" earlier this week, Kerry exhorted: "If the leaders on both sides continue to show strong leadership and a willingness to make those tough choices and a willingness to reasonably compromise, then peace is possible".

The cynicism in these words is astounding. Willingness to reasonably compromise? The only side that is ever compelled to make compromises, and unreasonable compromises, too, is the Palestinian side.

For a start, the Palestinian Authority does not have a mandate from the Palestinian people to represent them on vital national issues. The PA cabal rules over the West Bank territory without elections. It has negligible support among Palestinians in the second biggest occupied territory of Gaza along the Mediterranean coast. The elected Hamas administration in Gaza is opposed to the current peace negotiations and has been ostracized by the Israeli regime for the past six years owing to its more militant political stance.

The PA of Mahmoud Abbas is seen as a more pliable participant in talks with the Israelis and therefore is lionized by Washington as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian cause – even though it very arguably is not. The military coup in Egypt that ousted Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi on 3 July has been a political blow to its ally Hamas. This may have given Washington a window of opportunity to cajole the rival PA into the latest phase of the putative peace process.

So the first instance of compromise by the Palestinians is that they are not even permitted to have a strong, legitimate negotiating party to robustly represent their outstanding historical interests.

Subsequent compromises flow from this first one. Formerly, the Palestinian position going into talks insisted on explicit recognition of substantive issues. These issues include: a commitment by Israel to return to borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War. This reasonable demand is supported by United Nations Security Council Resolutions, as well as by international laws and treaties, such as the Fourth Geneva Convention and UN Charter.

Other substantive Palestinian preconditions are: the right of East Jerusalem (Al Quds) to be the capital of any eventual Palestinian state; the cessation of Israeli settlement construction in occupied territories; the right of return for up to four million Palestinians evicted from their homelands going back to the violent inception of Israel in 1948; and the release of up to 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners held in Israeli jails, as was stipulated under the Oslo Peace Accords signed 20 years ago in 1993. (There are no Israeli prisoners held by Palestinians.)

During US President Barack Obama’s first administration, Washington ostensibly urged recognition of the 1967 borders and the freezing of Israeli settlements.

However, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu haughtily snubbed Washington and the Palestinians on all counts. The unchecked Israeli building of new settler units on occupied Palestinian land, including provocatively in East Jerusalem, was the major reason why previous negotiations floundered and have not resumed for the past three years. There are now some 500,000 Israelis living in more than 120 illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

The Obama administration has quietly backed down on its earlier position. The Palestinian and Israeli sides have now come back to the negotiating table without any commitment from Israel to deal with any of the above substantive concerns. Indeed, while talks about talks were taking place in Washington this week, it emerged that Netanyahu has given the go-ahead to the building of thousands of more settler units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The truly pathetic thing is that the Palestinians have been so relentlessly browbeaten and violated by the Israeli state and so relentlessly betrayed by Washington that their negotiators have also given up on the basic, reasonable demands upon which a peace settlement might be premised.

Through brute force and intransigence, the Israeli state has made a mockery of international law and negotiations. This is not negotiation – it is a smash-and-grab colonisation of Arab land without any limit. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders have said so on and off the record. For them, the «peace process» is a just a cover to buy time so that they can establish more «facts on the ground», that is, the theft of more and more Palestinian territory.

In this contest between unequals Washington has done its utmost to redouble the inequality. Far from overseeing a level playing field, the presumed arbiter has tilted the field to an impossible gradient against the Palestinians while also moving the political goalposts to an unreachable distance.

An indicator of the partisan position of the US is the appointment of Martin Indyk as Washington’s interlocutor in the upcoming negotiations. Indyk is former US ambassador to Israel under Presidents Clinton and Bush Junior. He is also closely aligned with the powerful Israeli lobby in Washington. Kerry said of Indyk this week: «He brings a deep appreciation for the art of US diplomacy in the Middle East.»

The art of US diplomacy in the Middle East is evidently to give Israel a carte blanche to do whatever it likes with regard to trampling on Palestinian rights and lives. Israel rains down missiles and bombs on civilians in Gaza, as it did in early 2009 and at the end of 2012, killing hundreds of women and children, and all Washington does is reiterate its support for Israel’s «right to defend itself». This is not the function of an honest broker; it is the collusion of an accomplice in state terrorism.

This policy of the US towards Israel is not out of mere weakness in the face of the Israeli lobby, as some analysts contend. Rather it based on the essential role that the Israeli state performs in the projection of US imperialist interests across the strategically important Middle East. A just settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is antithetical to US imperialist hegemony in the region. This is because US power is predicated on an expansionist militarist Israel that serves as a garrison state to thwart genuine Palestinian and Arab democratic development.

US diplomacy is therefore not a catalytic ingredient for finding a peaceful solution. US imperialism is the overarching, impeding problem. But the trite rhetoric from Washington on the "tough challenges to find peace" is taken at face value by a vapid Western mainstream media and given credibility.

The premise of a proper peace process between Israelis and Palestinians being furnished in Washington is fundamentally misplaced. For it is a hollow illusory foundation that in reality and despite the rhetoric is never meant to serve as a cornerstone for any sustainable settlement. It is a charade to give the US and Israeli parties a semblance of earnest, behind which they can continue their pernicious imperialist policies and projections.

The correct place and premise for a genuine peace process is the International Court of Justice, where the past and ongoing egregious crimes and violations committed by Israel and its patron in Washington can be prosecuted and perhaps resolved. For decades Washington has postured as a matchmaker between estranged parties. In reality, it has and continues to facilitate a rapist state to violate a victim, over and over again.

Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime.

Targeting Rescuers

'Double Tap' Drone Strikes: US Deliberately Targeting Rescuers

by Young Turks

"A field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan's tribal areas appears to confirm that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.

The Bureau's new study focused mainly on strikes around a single village in North Waziristan -- attacks that were aimed at one of al Qaeda's few remaining senior figures, Yahya al-Libi. He was finally killed by a CIA drone strike on June 4 2012."

Posted August 05, 2013

An Exaggerated Threat in Africa?

Greenwald: Is U.S. Exaggerating Threat to Embassies to Silence Critics of NSA Domestic Surveillance?

by DemocracyNow!

The Obama administration has announced it will keep 19 diplomatic posts in North Africa and the Middle East closed for up to a week, due to fears of a possible militant threat. On Sunday, Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close the embassies was based on information collected by the National Security Agency.

"If we did not have these programs, we simply would not be able to listen in on the bad guys," Chambliss said, in a direct reference to increasing debate over widespread spying of all Americans revealed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.

"Nobody has ever questioned or disputed that the U.S. government, like all governments around the world, ought to be eavesdropping and monitoring the conversations of people who pose an actual threat to the United States in terms of plotting terrorist attacks," Greenwald says.

Pointing to the recent revelations by leaker Edward Snowden that he has reported on, Greenwald explains, "Here we are in the midst of one of the most intense debates and sustained debates that we’ve had in a very long time in this country over the dangers of excess surveillance, and suddenly, an administration that has spent two years claiming that it has decimated al-Qaeda decides that there is this massive threat that involves the closing of embassies and consulates around the world. ... The controversy is over the fact that they are sweeping up billions and billions of emails and telephone calls every single day from people around the world and in the United States who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism."

Greenwald also discusses the NSA’s XKeyscore Internet tracking program, Reuters’ report on the Drug Enforcement Agency spying on Americans, and the conviction of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning.