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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Scotland has a message for Donald Trump's hot air on wind farms; The IMF has a message for the oil industry (and they're not gonna like it); PLUS: A whole lotta frackin' going on --- from PA to CA, new revelations --- and earthquakes --- crack the fracking industry's facade ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Iceland baffled by Chinese tycoon's Arctic golf resort; How US can shift from oil & gas; Iraqi oil now mostly China’s; Solar energy brings voters to the polls in Kenya; Republican mayor leads CA city to nation's first solar energy mandate; Water wars: NM farmers vs. fossil fuel industry; Another bleak drought season for U.S.; Red states use more energy than blue states; UK's record weather extremes linked to Arctic sea ice loss; White House supports relaxing nuke rules; Rat poison manufacturer fights EPA ban ... PLUS: "You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice." ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• Scotland Defies Donald Trump Over Offshore Wind Farm:
• Scotland to Donald Trump: Drop dead. Offshore wind farm green-lit (Treehugger) [emphasis added]:
  Mr. Trump claimed that it would ruin the view from one of his golf course projects, and that (and I quote): "the reckless installation of these monsters [...] will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history" and that the wind farm would cause the "destruction of Scotland's coastline". No hyperbole there...
• VIDEO: Furious Trump Vows to Halt Offshore Wind Farm (STVNews)
• Scotland v. Trump: Scottish government approves windfarm opposed by Donald Trump: Billionaire property magnate attacks decision to build experimental offshore windfarm near his golf course as 'purely political' (Guardian UK)
• Wind Power In The UK And Ireland: Growing, Reliable And Making Donald Trump’s Hair Stand Up (Climate Progress)
• IMF Calls On Govt's to End 'Distorting' Fossil Fuel Subsidies:
• IMF: Want to fight climate change? Get rid of $1.9 trillion in energy subsidies. (Washington Post)
• VIDEO: Energy Subsidy Reform--Lesson and Implications (IMF.org)
• Report: IMF Policy Advice - Reforming Energy Subsidies (IMF.org):
  Subsidies are expensive for governments—and therefore taxpayers—to finance and can hinder governments’ efforts to reduce budget deficits. They also compete with other priority public spending on roads, schools, and healthcare.... Subsidies encourage excessive energy consumption, which accelerates the depletion of natural resources. They also reduce the incentive for investment in other forms of cleaner energy.
• POLL: Over 70% of Americans Support Renewables Over Fossil Fuels: (The Hill's e2 Wire):
  Roughly three-quarters of U.S. residents want the country to boost emphasis on wind and solar power production, making the fuels much more popular than coal, nuclear and oil, a new poll shows.
• Whole Lotta Fracking Goin' On:
• PA: A Clash in Pennsylvania Over Fracking and Water Tests (NYT Green)
• Range Resources Paid $750,000 in Fracking Contamination Settlement (Businessweek)
• Former Pa. Gov. Rendell pressed EPA in Range pollution case, emails show (E & E News)
• Ed Rendell (D) Intervened For Oil Company to Stop EPA Contamination Case Against Range Resources (DeSmogBlog)
• Ed Rendell’s Plea for Fracking Fails to Disclose Industry Ties (Pro Publica)
• PA: In the fracking fields, a fight over who regulates (APM Marketplace)
• EPA to Range Resources: Drill Away (State Impact Texas)
• Judge Sides with Wyoming in Fracking Chemical Suit (TIME Eco-centric blog):
  A judge in Casper has sided with the state of Wyoming and ruled against environmentalists who sought to make public the lists of ingredients that go into hydraulic fracturing fluids.
• Range Resources accused of bully tactics against fracking foes (Delaware Online)
• Fracking Caused OK Earthquake, But Regulators Ignore Data:
• Different Kind Of Boom: Replacing Extracted Oil And Gas With Toxic Wastewater Causes Earthquakes (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  It’s becoming increasingly clear that oil and gas extraction processes are actually weakening the structural integrity of the Earth’s crust just enough to cause more frequent earthquakes, in places not used to them.
• 2011 Oklahoma Temblor: Wastewater Injection Spurred Biggest Earthquake Yet, Study Says (Science Daily) [emphasis added]:
  A new study in the journal Geology is the latest to tie a string of unusual earthquakes... to the injection of wastewater deep underground. Researchers now say that the magnitude 5.7 earthquake near Prague, Okla., on Nov. 6, 2011... the biggest ever recorded in Oklahoma--destroyed 14 homes, buckled a federal highway and left two people injured. Small earthquakes continue to be recorded in the area.
• States deciding not to look at seismic risks of drilling (E & E News):
  Nine months after a National Academy of Sciences panel said oil and gas regulators should take steps to prevent man-made earthquakes, officials in key states are ignoring quake potential as they rewrite their drilling rules.
• ANALYSIS: To frack or not to frack? The shale gas development controversy (SkepticalScience.com)

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• You Can Have More Fossil Fuel. Or You Can Have Water. Your Choice.: Part 1. (Climate Crocks):





• U.S. Energy Shift: Life After Oil and Gas (NY Times):
  [Increasingly, scientific research and the experience of other countries should prompt us to ask: To what extent will we really “need” fossil fuel in the years to come? To what extent is it a choice?
• Iraqi oil: Once seen as U.S. boon, now it’s mostly China’s (McClatchy DC)
• Red States Are Less Energy-Efficient Than Blue Ones: Another Partisan Divide? (Green Tech Media)
• Solar energy brings voters to the polls in Kenya (AlertNet):
  Solar power, increasingly available in this part of Kenya’s Rift Valley, made it considerably easier for many Kenyans to exercise their democratic rights this election season. Clean energy lit polling stations open late into the evening in some places; in others it lit community centres used to provide civil education programmes in the lead-up to the elections or ran biometric voter registration centres.
• Republican Mayor Leads City To First-Ever Solar Energy Mandate: Lancaster, CA becomes first in nation to mandate solar panels on all new construction (Climate Progress)
• Water Wars: New Mexico Farmers Seek ‘Priority Call’ [Against Fossil Fuel Industry] as Drought Persists (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  “They’re not going to cut out the dairy industry,” he added. “They’re not going to cut off the oil and gas industry, because that’s economic development. So we’re left with a dilemma — the New Mexico water dilemma.”
• White House Supports Rollback of Cleanup Standards for Nuclear Incidents (Global Security Newswire):
  The White House has endorsed a plan to relax long-held standards for cleaning up radioactive material released by a nuclear power plant disaster or act of terrorism, a group of federal officials say in a new draft report.
• With Drought Season Off to a Bad Start, Scientists Forecast Another Bleak Year (Inside Climate News):
  Current climate-induced drought is slipping into a trend that scientists say resembles some of the worst droughts in U.S. history, like the Dust Bowl
• Manufacturer of d-CON rat poison fights EPA ban (McClatchy DC):
  The manufacturer of d-CON, a widely sold and popular brand of rat poison, is taking the rare step of challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to prohibit the over-the-counter sale of one of the nastiest and most effective of the poisons sold to consumers. Most of the 30 manufactures that make such products agreed to the ban...
• Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss: Melting sea ice, exposing huge parts of the ocean to the atmosphere, explains extreme weather both hot and cold (Guardian UK)
• Teeing Off at Edge of the Arctic? A Chinese Plan Baffles Iceland (NY Times):
  Prodded by diplomats from the United States and other countries to take a hard look at Mr. Huang’s intentions, Mr. Jonasson questioned what might lie behind China’s curious interest in Grimsstadir. “One has to look at this from a geopolitical perspective and ask about motivations,” Mr. Jonasson said.
• In Hot Water: Global Warming Has Accelerated In Past 15 Years, New Study Of Oceans Confirms (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically. As suspected, much of the ‘missing heat’ Kevin Trenberth previously talked about has been found in the deep oceans.
• Chris Christie Has 'No Sympathy' For Beach Dune Opposition In Wake Of Superstorm Sandy (Huffington Post Green) [emphasis added]:
  "I'm not going to put up with people who say their view of the Atlantic Ocean is more important than the lives and the property of their neighbors," the governor told residents of Middlesex, N.J., according to The Star-Ledger.
• How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 (Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
  [I]f the United States ever plans to deal seriously with climate change, the transportation sector will have to change drastically. And the National Academy of Sciences report concludes that no one single policy or technology will do the trick.
• NOAA: ‘Robust, Unambiguous’ Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers: Yes, The Modern Instruments Are Right. Just Ask The Coral. Or The Caves. Or The Ice Cores. Or The…. (Climate Progress)

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. ...It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.
• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

It's been a big gay week at the U.S. Supreme Court! So it seemed time to call on my friend Mike Rogers of RawStory.com to join me on the KPFK BradCast to talk about it all.

Rogers has joined me over the years for various 'Big Gay Hours' on the radio --- going all the way back to the darkest anti-gay years of 2004 and 2005 when the campaign against marriage equality had first been weaponized by the Republican Party. So it is with some joy that we were able to mark the extraordinary victories, and speed with which they have happened, for the gay community, as well as for those of us in the constitutional conservative community who believe in things like Equal Protection under the Law, etc.

We discussed both the CA Prop 8 and DOMA hearings this week at SCOTUS, how we all got here, and what has become of some of those closeted gay politicians who fought against gay rights and inspired Rogers to become an investigative blogger, open his old BlogActive.com site and begin reporting (and outing) the hypocrites standing in the way of equality for all. His work, outing folks such as Sen. Larry Craig and others, eventually helped to inspire Kirby Dick's 2009 documentary Outrage (in which he is featured).

We played and discussed some of the clips from this week's hearings, including some of the shameful performances from Justice Antonin "Just Makin' Shit Up Again" Scalia, Prop 8 proponent attorney Charles Cooper and the Obama Administration's horrible Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.

I also covered a bit of the mysterious Florida Election cyberhack story out of Miami-Dade (and a new clue to the mystery), and Desi Doyen joined me to have a laugh at the Tennessee "conservatives" who've suddenly found an amusing reason to finally give a damn about mountaintop removal mining, and for the latest Green News Report...

Download MP3 or listen online below...
[See post to listen to audio]

A week or two ago, after seeing Attorney General Eric Holder, in Senate testimony, pretend that he was "concerned" about a lack of prosecution of big banks due to their being too large, I described his claims, in a bit of a rant here as "complete bullshit".

Over the weekend, I spoke (via a very bad web cam) to Mike Papantonio on Ring of Fire about that very issue...

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Water wars in the U.S.; Bad year for butterflies; ExxonMobil fined (barely) for Yellowstone River pipeline spill; Russia stockpiles snow for the 2014 Winter Olympics; PLUS: Apple computers goes renewable ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): World’s Most Powerful Private Supercomputer Won’t Cure Cancer, But Will Find Oil Super Fast; Ocean warming has accelerated in past 15 years; Scientists work to create fuel from CO2; Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss; Fracking companies win WY disclosure suit; IG: DOE mismanaged stimulus-backed climate program; Peru declares environmental state of emergency; Canada must leave tar sands in the ground: study ... PLUS: Trump trumped: Scottish government approves windfarm opposed by Donald Trump ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• Limbaugh Lies: Scientists Who Accept Global Warming Consensus Are "Political Advocates" Spreading "Misinformation" (Media Matters)
• Water Wars in the US: Georgia Annexes Tennessee?!?:
• Georgia Senate Passes Measure To Move State Line, Claim Tennessee Water (TPM)
• Senate Adds Threat to Tennessee River Bill (Atlanta Journal-Constitution):
  The state Senate added a threat Monday to a measure trying to settle Georgia’s dispute over its boundary with Tennessee: It would take the Volunteer State to court if it did not agree to give Georgia a sliver of land on the Tennessee River... Georgia’s disputed claim to the river dates to 1818.
• Georgia Senate passes resolution to move state line, claim Tennessee River water (Times Free-Press)
• High court grants Georgia water-wars victory (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6/25/2012)
• Bad News for Butterflies:
• Monarch Butterflies Hit New Low; "Worrisome" Trend: The insects found in only about three acres of habitat, report says. (National Geographic)
• VIDEO: Flight of the Butterflies PSA (Monarch Watch, Univ. of Kansas)
• Butterflies suffer devastating year after UK's record wet summer: Scientists say it is possible that there have never been fewer butterflies in Britain since it was first inhabited by humans (Guardian UK)
• ExxonMobil Fined $1.7m for Yellowstone River Spill:
• Yellowstone Oil Spill: Regulators Propose Penalty For Exxon Pipeline Rupture In Montana River (Huffington Post Green):
  U.S. Department of Transportation regulators alleged a chain of bad decisions by Exxon leading up to the spill and in its immediate aftermath. That included Exxon employees' failure to close an upstream safety valve, which could have significantly reduced the size of the spill after it was first detected. As a result, the agency said, oil continued gushing into the flooding river for almost an hour after the break was noticed by pipeline controllers in Houston. The agency also faulted the company for not addressing flood risks and not taking adequate measures to prevent a spill.
• Canada: Ontario municipalities raise oil spill concerns on Enbridge pipeline reversal (Ottawa Citzen):
• Good News: Apple Computers Achieve 75% Renewable Energy Worldwide:
  • Apple Says Data Centers Now Use 100% Renewable Energy (Bloomberg News):
    The company’s data centers now run on energy sources such as solar, wind and geothermal, instead of coal or other fossil fuels, Apple said on its website. The centers house server computers that store and distribute songs, applications and other content from services such as iTunes, iMessage and iCloud.
  • Apple Adapts Quickly to a Coal-Free Future (Triple Pundit)
  • Apple defends green credentials of cloud computing services: Greenpeace report named Apple among worst offenders for using highly polluting coal to power their data centres (Guardian UK, 4/17/2012)

• Sochi Stockpiles Snow for Winter Olympics:
• Sochi Organizers Are Stockpiling Snow, Just in Case (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Up to half of the saved snow may melt by next winter, but the site managers said they could conduct the Olympics even in the unlikely event that no natural snow falls next winter. The stockpiled snow can be shoved down the mountain with Sno-Cats or guided onto steep slides — pipes, a meter in diameter, cut in half — aimed at where the snow is most needed.

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• World’s Most Powerful Private Supercomputer Won’t Cure Cancer, But Will Find Oil Super Fast (Climate Progress)
• Scotland v. Trump: Scottish government approves windfarm opposed by Donald Trump: Billionaire property magnate attacks decision to build experimental offshore windfarm near his golf course as 'purely political' (Guardian UK)
• In Hot Water: Global Warming Has Accelerated In Past 15 Years, New Study Of Oceans Confirms (Climate Progress) [emphasis added]:
  Completely contrary to the popular contrarian myth, global warming has accelerated, with more overall global warming in the past 15 years than the prior 15 years. This is because about 90% of overall global warming goes into heating the oceans, and the oceans have been warming dramatically. As suspected, much of the ‘missing heat’ Kevin Trenberth previously talked about has been found in the deep oceans.
• Discovery May Allow Scientists to Make Fuel from Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere (Science Daily):
  "Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do-absorb it and generate something useful," said Michael Adams, member of UGA's Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and Distinguished Research Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.
• Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss: Melting sea ice, exposing huge parts of the ocean to the atmosphere, explains extreme weather both hot and cold (Guardian UK)
• A thousand soldiers sent to protect elephants after marauding elephant poachers [warning: graphic photos] (Monga Bay)
• Judge Sides with Wyoming in Fracking Chemical Suit (TIME Eco-centric blog):
  A judge in Casper has sided with the state of Wyoming and ruled against environmentalists who sought to make public the lists of ingredients that go into hydraulic fracturing fluids.
• President Obama Designates Five New National Monuments (White House.gov)
• Analysis: Obama's climate agenda may face setbacks in federal court (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
  President Barack Obama's plan to use federal agencies, and the Environmental Protection Agency in particular, to drive his second-term climate change agenda might be in peril if he cannot fill vacant seats on the federal court that has jurisdiction over major national regulations, legal experts say.
• DOE IG Report: Energy Dept. mismanaged stimulus-backed climate program (The Hill's e2 Wire):
  The audit notes three project recipients together received $90 million even though reviews of the proposals “identified significant financial and/or technical issues.”
• Peru declares environmental state of emergency in its rainforest: Peru's government reports high levels of barium, lead, chrome and petroleum-related compounds in region that is home to oil field (Guardian UK)
• Chris Christie Has 'No Sympathy' For Beach Dune Opposition In Wake Of Superstorm Sandy (Huffington Post Green) [emphasis added]:
  "I'm not going to put up with people who say their view of the Atlantic Ocean is more important than the lives and the property of their neighbors," the governor told residents of Middlesex, N.J., according to The Star-Ledger.
• Green groups, billionaire threaten primaries against pro-Keystone Dems (The Hill's e2 Wire)
• Canada: Fossil fuel divestment necessary in order to avoid "carbon bubble": study (Canada Newswire) [emphasis added]:
  Canada's economy is experiencing a "carbon bubble" that could have significant consequences for Canada's financial markets and pension funds, according to a new study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.... Between 2/3rds and 4/5ths of known fossil fuel reserves have been deemed to be "unburnable carbon" that cannot safely be combusted without leading to catastrophic climate change.
• Texas Retailer Says “No” to Genetically Engineered Salmon (Prevention Magazine)
• Guatemalan Mayan Community Seeks International Help for Protection (Indian Country Today):
  The Maya Q’eqchi Agua Caliente community of Guatemala, some of whose members have been killed, threatened and tortured while trying to defend their territory from a mining company, sent a delegation to Washington D.C. in early March looking for allies and further protections in their ongoing struggle.
• Cities Weigh Taking Over From Private Utilities (NY Times) [emphasis added]:
  Roughly 70 percent of the nation’s homes are powered through private, investor-owned utilities, which are allowed to earn a set profit on their investments, normally through the rates they charge customers.
  ...
  According to data from the federal Energy Information Administration, municipal utilities over all offer cheaper residential electricity than private ones — not including electric cooperatives, federal utilities or power marketers — a difference that holds true in 32 of the 48 states where both exist.
• How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 (Washington Post) [emphasis added]:
  [I]f the United States ever plans to deal seriously with climate change, the transportation sector will have to change drastically. And the National Academy of Sciences report concludes that no one single policy or technology will do the trick.
• NOAA: ‘Robust, Unambiguous’ Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers: Yes, The Modern Instruments Are Right. Just Ask The Coral. Or The Caves. Or The Ice Cores. Or The…. (Climate Progress)

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. ...It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.
• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

One month ago, The Miami Herald's Patricia Mazzei unleashed an excellent investigative report on an attempted series of online cyberhacks of absentee ballot requests prior to last August's primary election in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Mazzei's article describes the mysterious attempt by someone to request more than 2,500 absentee ballots for elections in three different Miami-Dade districts using anonymous proxy Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from foreign countries to hide the real identity of the requester. A grand jury looked into the matter [PDF] of the "phantom" requests, but was hamstrung by the fact that they were not told --- the article says it was due to administrative confusion --- that the initial IP addresses used to make the absentee ballot requests were actually not from overseas, but local to Miami-Dade. Had prosecutors had that information, they might have been able to zero in on the culprits, rather than close the investigation late last year without identifying a suspect.

The case has now reportedly been reopened, but the length of time since the initial event may have allowed the trail run cold. Hopefully we will find out soon.

Last week, the story suddenly received a lot of fresh attention after it was picked up by NBC News' Gil Aegerter who describes what happened as the "first known case" of such a cyberattack on a U.S. election.

Setting aside, for now, the point as to whether this is the first such attack --- I've reported quite a bit of evidence of several others over the years (the NBC report links to a number of stories I've broken on these matters, including one of my stories at ComputerWorld in 2007 describing a malicious virus that struck Sarasota's contested 2006 Special Election for the U.S. House where some 18,000 votes ultimately disappeared from the touch-screen voting machines) --- there are a few key points and lessons from this story which I'd like to underscore, despite the fact that the mainstream corporate coverage has been pretty decent here for a change.

Additionally, one of several key remaining mysteries in the story --- one that I've been trying to make sense over the past several weeks, since learning of the story --- may now have an answer, or at least a new and troubling clue...

Potential Clue to One of the Story's Central Mysteries

Aside from the identity of the failed "bad guy(s)" here, and why the prosecutors weren't originally notified about the Miami-Dade IP addresses in the first place, there has been another major "unknown" in the story originally headlined by The Miami Herald as "The case of the phantom ballots: an electoral whodunit".

That "unknown" has been how the scheme was supposed to have affected the elections in question, had it not been discovered and stopped. Since the absentee ballot requests were made on behalf of "infrequent voters" (who would otherwise be unlikely to show up to vote in person), and scheduled to be sent to their normal address where they are registered, how would anybody then be able to use those ballots to game the elections with fraudulent votes?

"It doesn’t make any sense to me why someone would do that, because you’d still need the person to [vote for you]," said one of the NJ-based consultants for two of the candidates (brothers) involved in two of the races.

"Had the requests been filled," Miami Herad's Mazzei goes on to suggest, "short of stealing the ballots from mailboxes, the campaigns would have been able to flood the targeted voters with phone calls, fliers and home visits to try to sway their vote."

"Persuade enough of them," she suggests, "and you might flip the race."

But that seems a fairly sloggy way to try and have an effect on election results. On Friday, BlackBoxVoting.org's Bev Harris offers up a more reasonable (and disturbing) scheme which could have been planned here, had the operation not been interrupted before it fully played out.

She points out that the printing and mailing of absentee ballots is generally jobbed out to third-party contractors by elections officials. The third-parties are given the database of voters who have requested absentee ballots and then they take care of the job from there. Often, the company hired for this job is publicly known and vetted, but that contractor sometimes then hires yet another outfit to do the actual work of printing ballot envelopes and mailing them out to voters.

"If you have a few thousand strategically targeted extra ballots that you know are bogus, and you reroute the database to an off-the-public-record consultant during the print & mail phase, you can deliver those ballots anywhere you want," Harris writes. "They can all be sent to the same address; no one would know."

"I'm not sure what vendor Miami-Dade County is using to print and mail ballots; some Florida counties use Runbeck, out of Arizona by way of Tampa. But regardless of who they use, it isn't the Miami-Dade elections people who actually do the mailing. Whoever does the print & mail phase has both the absentee request database and total control over where absentee ballots go."

The scheme, as Harris envisions it then, would require a "bad guy" to make the absentee ballot requests and an accomplice either at the final print and mail outfit --- or somewhere else along the chain of custody of the absentee ballot database --- to change the addresses where those illegitimately requested ballots were to be sent. As prosecutors are said to be looking into this case again, they may want to ask some questions to whoever might have receive access to that absentee ballot request database.

See the BBV article for a bit more background on some of the shady players who can be found in the absentee ballot print and mailing business, as well as a few more details on potential suspects in the FL case revealed by common threads between the three elections in question.

The several other points that I wanted to flag here are as follows:

Vote-by-Mail is a Terrible Idea

• We have long decried the many perils of absentee balloting and Vote-by-Mail (VBM) elections. This latest FL hack points out just another reason why VBM is always troubling and, far and away, the most frequent place where ballot fraud is known to occur. Republicans love to suggest that (Democratic) voters are committing fraud by misrepresenting themselves at the polling place --- thus, draconian, disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restrictions are needed, they pretend. But they know they are lying. That type of fraud is incredibly rare. They know that most of this type of chicanery, where it exists, is done via absentee balloting, which polling place Photo ID restrictions that Republicans are pushing in state after state, does absolutely nothing to deter.

Adding in the points raised by Harris about how absentee ballot databases are often processed outside of public oversight, and you've got another reason to be concerned. Such ballots, she notes, "need never be mailed at all," if a bad operator decides to game an election in this way.

You Call That a 'Safeguard'?!

• The Miami Herald story offered one disturbing revelation that I haven't seen commented upon elsewhere. Moreover, it's reported as a "feature", as opposed to a "bug" in the Miami-Dade online absentee ballot request system.

"There are other safeguards, too," Mazzei notes in describing how the attack was stymied when the software flagged the suspicious activity as coming from several single IP addresses. "When a voter submits an absentee request online, Miami-Dade doesn’t automatically send a ballot. The request is reviewed by an elections department staffer, who must manually sign off on sending it."

That is considered a "safeguard"?! I'd consider that very troubling, frankly. It means that one election official can determine whether or not any number of voters actually receive the absentee ballot they've requested. It sounds like a great way for a "bad guy" election insider to suppress the votes of just about anybody they may choose.

The Most Disturbing Aspect: The Menace of Internet Voting

• The real message in this story is not about the perils of online registration and absentee ballot requests systems, even though that has, understandably, been at the center of most of the coverage. The real message here is about the dangers of using the Internet for voting! The push for online voting has, insanely, been increasing over the past year or so. We've taken to describing it as the Internet Voting Virus as it spreads to places like California, where even Democrats are ignoring virtually every world-class computer science and security expert in order to push for this horrible idea.

In the NBC report, a number of the experts we've turned to over the years in our own stories and interviews here are quoted trying to offer those same warnings again, in the wake of what happened in the case of the failed online absentee ballot requests.

J. Alex Halderman, the University of MI computer science professor behind the successful remote hack of a mock Internet Voting system, which had been set to be used in a real election in Washington D.C. the following month in 2010, and the hack of a touch-screen voting machine that turned it, literally, into a game of Pac Man, tries to warn that the failed cyberattack in Florida was just the tip of the iceberg.

He explained to NBC's Aegerter that "an attack somewhat more sophisticated than the one in Florida, completely within the norm for computer fraud these days, would likely be able to circumvent the checks."

David Jefferson of Livermore National Laboratory, and a member of the Board of Directors at Verified Voting, once again warns, as he has many times here in the past, that the security of electronic voting and registration systems currently in use, as well as the insane schemes currently being used and planned for Internet Voting, are serious threats to national security. "The legitimacy of government depends on it being impossible for single parties to change the results of elections," he told Aegerter.

"Whoever did this is clearly capable of engaging in online registration fraud (in states such as Maryland and Washington with weak authentication)," Jefferson told me via email some weeks ago, "or online vote fraud."

Jeremy Epstein, a senior computer scientist at SRI International, warns about the perils of Internet Voting in the NBC story as well. "The overwhelming consensus of the computer science community is don’t do it, it’s a bad idea,"

And, finally, Cleveland State University's Election Integrity expert and law professor Candice Hoke cut right to the chase, warning that while politicians may see Internet Voting as a way to increase turnout for their voters and election officials may see such schemes as a way to save money on polling sites, ballot printing costs and manual labor, the real costs to democracy ultimately outweigh everything else.

"It’s cheap," she said, "if you don’t care whether elections are stolen."

* * *Please support The BRAD BLOG's fiercely independent, award-winning coverage of your electoral system, as available from no other media outlet in the nation --- now in our TENTH YEAR! --- with a donation to help us keep going (Snail mail, more options here). If you like, we'll send you some great, award-winning election integrity documentary films in return! Details right here...

Looking at this article here will show you the NRA Grades for senators all over the United States.

Huffington Post- March 22, 2013

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association came under fire late Thursday from members of a gun-control advocacy group in Newtown, Conn., after reports surfaced of Newtown residents receiving robocalls and pro-gun postcards from the NRA.

The advocacy group, the Newtown Action Alliance, posted a Facebook message Thursday about the calls, prompting responses from people who said they’d received communications from the NRA and were upset by them.

“I received one of these,” Newtown resident Christopher Wenis wrote on Facebook Thursday afternoon. “I was insulted and offended.” Wenis told The Huffington Post in an interview Friday night that in the 36 hours since he first posted his response, he received two more robocalls from the NRA, one later on Thursday night and one on Friday evening.

“I’ve got a 5-year-old son who went to preschool on the Sandy Hook Elementary School campus,” Wenis explained. “And this was a really hard week for me on a lot of levels. These calls were the very last thing I needed.”

More-

NBC News- March 23, 2013

By Becky Bratu

A $12 million television ad campaign paid for by Mayors Against Illegal Guns hopes to push gun control efforts including comprehensive background checks.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the group’s co-chair, announced the ad buy Saturday. The New York Times reported Bloomberg is financing the campaign.

“I don’t think there’s ever been an issue where the public has spoken so clearly, where Congress hasn’t eventually understood and done the right thing,” Bloomberg told NBC News’ David Gregory in an interview that will be broadcast Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

More-

New Orleans Times-Picayune- March 21, 2013

By Claire Galofaro

An Orleans Parish judge on Thursday ruled that the state statute forbidding certain felons from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, in the wake of a constitutional amendment passed last year that made the right to bear arms a fundamental one in Louisiana. The issue will now go straight to the state Supreme Court, which must decide whether the statute infringes on Louisiana citizens’ now-enhanced right to gun possession. 

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Darryl Derbigny on Thursday dismissed the charge against one felon, but took his decision a step further than another judge faced with a similar decision earlier this month.

Derbigny ruled that the entire statute — RS 14:95.1 — was unconstitutional after voters last year approved by a sweeping majority a constitutional amendment backed by the National Rifle Association. That bill made gun ownership a “fundamental right,” on the same level as freedom of speech or religion.

A court interpreting any law restricting a fundamental right — as gun ownership is now considered — must approach it with “strict scrutiny,” the highest level of judicial scrutiny.

More-

Public Policy Polling- January 30, 2013

Texas voters don’t like Barack Obama. 47% of voters approve of him to 51% who disapprove. 39% of them, including 67% of Republicans, would like to see him impeached from office.

Texas voters do like the NRA. 46% view it favorably to 40% with an unfavorable opinion. 47% of voters support its proposal to put armed police officers in every school in the country, to 39% who oppose it. Even 41% of Democrats support that initiative.

Overall on the issue of guns Texans say they trust the NRA over President Obama by a 47/43 margin.

And despite all of that 49% of Texas voters support an assault weapons ban to just 41% opposed to it. Most Democrats support it, independents favor it by a 53/34 margin, and even among Republicans 23% support it. We’ve found support for the assault weapons ban everywhere we’ve polled it, but it’s particularly striking to see that voters favor it in a pro-gun, anti-Obama state like Texas.

10 years into his time in the US Senate, John Cornyn is still a blank slate to a surprisingly large percentage of Texas voters. They’re closely divided on his job performance with 34% of voters approving of him and 36% disapproving, with 30% not having an opinion either way.

More-

NBC News-

By Matthew DeLuca

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed landmark new gun laws on Wednesday expanding background checks on gun purchases and limiting the size of ammunition magazines, placing the traditionally firearm-friendly state among the handful to pass new restrictions in the wake of the shooting in Newtown, Conn.

The Democratic governor defended the legislation in a press conference on Wednesday. Hickenlooper said he had found widespread support among state residents for broadening background checks, and dismissed the idea that politicians had been pressured from outside the state.

“This didn’t come from the White House,” Hickenlooper said.

Hickenlooper’s signature came the day after the head of Colorado’s Department of Corrections, Tom Clements, was shot and killed in his home, apparently after he answered a ring at his front door, authorities said.

More-

We desperately could use a toon or two around here of late. Sorry this is not a happier or funnier one though...

As to the extra punchline at bottom right, it's a reference to the quote misattributed to Churchill: "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

And, by the way, a better name for "Carbon Tax" is "Pollution Tax".

Yes, companies who dump huge amounts of pollution --- tons and tons of it --- into our atmosphere every single day ought not be able to do it for free, as they do now, since we all have to pay the price of cleaning it up, as we are now doing in spades.

[Hat-tip Joe Romm at Climate Progress]

If you haven't noticed, of late, Desi Doyen --- the Managing Editor of The BRAD BLOG's Green News Report and my co-host on that nationally syndicated radio feature --- has been guest hosting The Young Turks' nightly online video show quite a bit of late. (She did so several times already this week, and will be back again tonight. You can watch tonight's airing right here from 9p-11p ET / 6p - 8p PT.)

One of the segments from last night's episode, while disturbing, is worth flagging at least briefly here, as its an issue we've touched on throughout the years, going back to the earliest years of the Iraq War. It's also one that has been under-covered and under-investigated by the mainstream corporate media.

The use of depleted uranium, a byproduct of the nuclear power industry, in U.S. weaponry is believed by many to be tied to an alarming increase in birth-defects in Iraqi children, as well as cancer rates in members of the U.S. military. While some studies report no significant health risks due to the use of such weaponry, a lack of long-term studies leaves the issue, for now, an open question --- at the very least. Truthout's Mike Ludwig reported this week that "The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has estimated that 1,000 to 2,000 metric tons of depleted uranium was fired during the 2003 war in Iraq," and that clean-up costs for some 300 to 365 sites where "depleted uranium contamination was identified by Iraqi authorities" is estimated to cost tens of millions of dollars.

While the U.S. and British governments "disputed allegations that their weapons have poisoned soldiers and civilians and caused increased rates of cancer and birth defects," as discussed in the segment below from last night's TYT show, the reported rate of birth defects in Fallujah, for example, is now said to be 14 times higher than it was in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs there.

The use of depleted uranium in U.S. weapons is believed by some to be one of the reasons for that alarming statistic, as Desi discussed along with TYT regulars Ana Kasparian and Steve Oh last night. [WARNING: Some of the photos shown in the segment are graphic and disturbing]...

A couple of the other (less graphic) segments from TYT in which the lovely Desi helps with righteous rants and the raking of various muck include...

• Amazing backlog of Veteran Benefits begs question as to who actually "supports the troops"? (A particularly sharp, and personal, Desi rant in this one!) Watch it here...

• "Catfight" breaks out between current and former GOP chairs Reince Priebus and Michael Steele. Watch it here...

Yesterday we published Tomas Young's "Last Letter: A Message to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a Dying Veteran", in which the 33-year old U.S. Army veteran, paralyzed from the chest down during an ambush on a rescue mission in Iraq in 2004, announces his plan to soon allow himself to die, as his physical condition has intolerably deteriorated.

We included a link to our own interview with Tomas in 2005 when he first came down from Kansas City to "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX, on his honeymoon, in support of Cindy Sheehan whose son Casey was killed on the same day, in the same city --- 4/4/04 in Sadr City --- where Tomas was shot twice and gravely injured in the unarmored truck his platoon had been sent out in.

Tomas has been a tremendously heroic and outspoken anti-war voice over the years, as we were reminded once again today during this morning's heart-wrenching episode of Democracy Now! devoted to his story. Phil Donahue, co-director of the 2007 documentary film about Tomas, Body of War, (in which our '05 interview with Tomas is briefly seen) is on hand as well for the discussion. The hour included a live satellite interview with Tomas, who now struggles to speak. His thoughts seem very coherent, but what is left of his body and its functions are clearly breaking down. He is joined by his wife Claudia.

It is all worth watching, if you can spare the time. The clips from Body of War, especially the one in which Tomas speaks with the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-VA) as they read off the names together of the "Immortal 23" who voted against the Iraq War in the U.S. Senate, are particularly moving.

This is the story of the Iraq War ten years later --- and how it broke this nation just as surely as it broke Tomas Young's body and eventually his spirit and will to live...

After the lengthy segment above, Donahue is asked about his plight at MSNBC where he was fired just before the war began, as we would later find out from an internal executive memo, because his show included too many anti-war voices.

He says the episode reveals "how corporate media shapes our opinions and our coverage."

"They were terrified of the anti-war voice. And that is not an overstatement," Donahue says. "If you're General Electric, you certainly don't want an anti-war voice on a cable channel that you own. Donald Rumsfeld's your biggest customer!"

He explains again how he was required to have two pro-war voices for every anti-war voice he had on his show. "I could have [Bush Admin Iraq war hawk and architect] Richard Perle on alone, but I couldn't have Dennis Kucinich," he explains. "I was considered 'two liberals'." That segment can be watched here.

Finally, in the last moments of the show, Tomas reads his "Last Letter" to Bush and Cheney aloud and answers Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman's question as to whether there is anything that might lead him to change his mind about his decision to soon stop using his feeding tube in order to allow his life to end.

That video segment, including Tomas' answer to Goodman's question, follows below...

[Hat-tip Ernie Canning.]

IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: L.A. to be 100% coal-free; TN conservatives slam mountaintop removal coal mining - by China; NV coal company faked air pollution reports; Green jobs are the fastest growing job sector in the nation; PLUS: Leave it to beavers - 'hero' beaver dam halts oil spill ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): State Dept. hid ties to Keystone XL pipeline company; Toyota Unveils New I-Road; NOAA: ‘Robust’ independent evidence confirms thermometer measurements; Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee; Pope Francis calls for defending environment; Report: Security risks of climate change; Enviro groups criticize Obama's DOE nominee energy industry ties; Polar bear habitat shrinks even more... PLUS: How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

• VIDEO: Fox News: Solar Power "Might Be Tanking Our Economy" (Media Matters):
  Experts note that it is common for an industry to consolidate as it matures, as some companies are out-competed or bought out by larger companies.
• NV Coal Plant Faked Air Pollution Data:
• More coal-fired idiocy and mendacity in Nevada (Grist)
• Tribe accuses NV Energy of sending phony pollution data to regulators (Las Vegas Review-Journal):
  The Moapa Band of Paiute Indians bases its claim on documents showing the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection had to discard about five years of dust pollution data for one monitoring station at the Reid Gardner Generating Station after a 2011 investigation determined the information was logged incorrectly by a contractor hired by the utility to monitor the air around the plant.

  State environmental regulators blamed the phony data on “human error” by the contractor and let NV Energy off with a warning.

• Despite Harry Reid’s objections, EPA clears coal-fired power plant to operate (Las Vegas Sun):
  The Sierra Club and the Moapa Band of Paiutes located near the plant had also called for its closure.There were complaints the haze caused by the pollution contributed to the visibility at the Jarbidge Wilderness area and in the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon.
• TN Conservatives Slam MTR Coal-Mining --- by China:
• VIDEO: Conservatives Outraged About Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee... By Chinese Company (Mother Jones):
  The Tennessee Conservative Union ad warns that they will become "the first state in our great nation to permit the red Chinese to destroy our mountains and take our coal..."We're proud that Tennessee is a red state," the ad concludes. "But just how red are we willing to go?"
  ...
  The ad comes off as anti-China, but it also offers a critique of mountaintop removal coal mining in general, which is the big news here.





• L.A. To Be Coal-Free by 2025:
• L.A. moves to eliminate reliance on coal-powered energy (LA Times):
  DWP commissioners proceed with plans to dump the utility's interest in a coal-burning plant in Arizona and convert another plant in Utah to natural gas.
• VIDEO: Kicking LA's Coal Addiction (YouTube, Office of LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa)
• EXCLUSIVE: Antonio Villaraigosa on getting off of coal, renewables, green legacy (KPCC)
• Green jobs grow four times faster than others (LA Times) [emphasis added]:
  Clean-energy jobs make up a small part of U.S. employment, but a new federal report shows they are growing much faster than other work, even healthcare. The nation had about 3.4 million green energy jobs in 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday in its second annual and final look at this emerging category of employment. (More on why it's the last report later.)

  In all, so-called green jobs accounted for just 2.6% of all employment that year, but a comparison with 2010 data shows that these jobs grew at four times the rate of all the others combined.

• Utah Encourages Kids to Support Fossil Fuels on Earth Day:
• Utah Schoolchildren Asked To Celebrate Fossil Fuels And Mining On Earth Day (Climate Progress)
• Official Contest Rules: 2013 Theme: Where Would WE Be Without Oil, Gas & Mining? [PDF] (UT Div. of Oil, Gas & Mining): "DO NOT USE GLITTER."
• Hero Beavers: Beaver Dam Halts Chevron Pipeline Oil Spill:
• Beaver dams block Chevron oil spill in Utah (Grist)
• Crews work to clean up diesel spill, beavers near Willard Bay (Standard-Examiner)
• Hero beavers of Willard Bay spill on mend at wildlife center
• Diesel spill closes portions of Willard Bay State Park: Emergency responders on Tuesday flocked to Chevron’s third petroleum pipeline spill in Utah in less than three years. (Salt Lake Tribune)

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

• How to cut U.S. gasoline use in half by 2030 (Washington Post):
  [I]f the United States ever plans to deal seriously with climate change, the transportation sector will have to change drastically. And the National Academy of Sciences report concludes that no one single policy or technology will do the trick.
• EXCLUSIVE: State Dept. Hid Contractor's Ties to Keystone XL Pipeline Company (Mother Jones):
  A top expert who helped write the government's latest Keystone report previously consulted on three different TransCanada projects—a fact the State Department tried to hide.
• VIDEO: Toyota Unveils New I-Road. I-Want One. (Climate Crocks)
• NOAA: ‘Robust, Unambiguous’ Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers: Yes, The Modern Instruments Are Right. Just Ask The Coral. Or The Caves. Or The Ice Cores. Or The…. (Climate Progress)
• Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee (Climate Progress)
• At inaugural Mass, Pope Francis calls for defending environment, poor (Religion News)
• A New Harvard Report Probes Security Risks of Extreme Weather and Climate Change (Harvard University for the Environment)
• Drilling Deeper: The Wealth of Business Connections for Obama’s Energy Pick (Pro Publica):
  [Energy Department cabinet nominee Ernie] Moniz’s work for energy companies since he served in President Clinton’s Energy Department has irked some environmentalists.
• LEDs: New [cheaper] Reasons to Change Light Bulbs (NY Times)
• Warming Arctic: Receding ice leaves Hudson Bay polar bears less time to eat (CS Monitor):
  Polar bears' territorial tendencies and the diminishing ice season on Hudson Bay are conspiring to leave the animals less time to eat, researchers say. This bodes ill for their ability to reproduce, and survive.
• Days of Promise Fade for Ethanol (NY Times):
  Nearly 10 percent of the nation’s ethanol plants have stopped production over the past year, in part because the drought that has ravaged much of the nation’s crops pushed commodity prices so high that ethanol has become too expensive to produce.
• Canada: Ottawa seeks emergency cleanup of abandoned northern mine (CTV News):
  Federal officials are scrambling to clean up a crumbling, abandoned northern gold mine that is in imminent danger of releasing massive amounts of arsenic, asbestos and other toxins.
• Debunker: How the Daily Mail's David Rose Hides the Rise in Global Warming (Skeptical Science)

• COVER STORY: It's Global Warming, Stupid (Businessweek):
  If all that doesn't impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.
• Ocean Acidification: Animals are already dissolving in Southern Ocean (New Scientist)
• Global warming targets further out of reach, UN says (Phys.org):
  Based on current pledges, global average temperatures could rise by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 to 9.0 degrees Fahrenheit) this century --- way above the two degrees Celsius being targeted, said a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report.

• Skeptical Science: Get the FULL DEBUNKING of ALL Climate Science Denier Arguments
• VIDEO: James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (TED Talks):
  Top climate scientist James Hansen tells the story of his involvement in the science of and debate over global climate change. In doing so he outlines the overwhelming evidence that change is happening and why that makes him deeply worried about the future.
• VIDEO ANIMATION: Time history of atmospheric CO2 (NOAA Carbon Tracker YouTube channel):
• VIDEO: Animation Charts Modern Global Warming (NYT Green)
• Thinking Big: NREL Study Shows 80 Percent Renewables Possible By 2050 (Climate Progress)
• Part 1: The brutal logic of climate change (David Roberts, Grist) [emphasis added]:
  It's simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale. That means moving to emergency footing. War footing. ...It is unpleasant to talk like this. People don't want to hear it.
• Part 2: The brutal logic of climate change mitigation (David Roberts, Grist)
• How to Buy Time in the Fight against Climate Change: Mobilize to Stop Soot and Methane: A short list of relatively simple actions taken to reduce greenhouse gases other than CO2 could help put the brakes on global warming--if implemented globally (Scientific American)
• World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns: If fossil fuel infrastructure is not rapidly changed, the world will 'lose for ever' the chance to avoid dangerous climate change (Guardian UK) [emphasis added]:
  "The door is closing," Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. "I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever."
• Concise Overview: The IPCC report on extreme climate and weather events (Real Climate)
• The Real Global Warming Signal (Tamino)

NOTE FROM BRAD: On August 28, 2005, I was the first in the national media to interview U.S. Army Specialist Tomas Young at "Camp Casey" in Crawford, TX. He and his then wife Brie had come down from Kansas City on their honeymoon to support Cindy Sheehan, the "Gold Star Mom" who was famously demanding a meeting with George W. Bush. Tomas' unarmored vehicle had been ambushed in Sadr City, Iraq on the same day that Sheehan's son Casey was killed in the same city. The attack left Tomas paralyzed from the chest down.

Some years later, Tomas' story would be told on 60 Minutes, and then in a heart-wrenching 2007 documentary film, Body of War, by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro. (My interview on the ground at "Camp Casey" with Tomas and Brie is seen briefly in both. The full audio of my interview with them is posted in full at the bottom of this article, after Tomas' letter.)

The following open letter, which Tomas says is his "last", was originally published this week at TruthDig and republished in full here with their permission.

* * *

To: George W. Bush and Dick Cheney
From: Tomas Young

I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all-the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans-my fellow veterans-whose future you stole...

Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character. You sent us to fight and die in Iraq after you, Mr. Cheney, dodged the draft in Vietnam, and you, Mr. Bush, went AWOL from your National Guard unit. Your cowardice and selfishness were established decades ago. You were not willing to risk yourselves for our nation but you sent hundreds of thousands of young men and women to be sacrificed in a senseless war with no more thought than it takes to put out the garbage.

I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much less to the United States. I did not join the Army to "liberate" Iraqis or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to implant what you cynically called "democracy" in Baghdad and the Middle East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you told us could be paid for by Iraq's oil revenues. Instead, this war has cost the United States over $3 trillion. I especially did not join the Army to carry out pre-emptive war. Pre-emptive war is illegal under international law. And as a soldier in Iraq I was, I now know, abetting your idiocy and your crimes. The Iraq War is the largest strategic blunder in U.S. history. It obliterated the balance of power in the Middle East. It installed a corrupt and brutal pro-Iranian government in Baghdad, one cemented in power through the use of torture, death squads and terror. And it has left Iran as the dominant force in the region. On every level-moral, strategic, military and economic-Iraq was a failure. And it was you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, who started this war. It is you who should pay the consequences.

I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.

I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn't lying a sin? Isn't murder a sin? Aren't theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.

My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.

* * *

• Read Chris Hedges' 3/10/13 "The Crucifixion of Tomas Young" to learn about Tomas' life, and continuing physical deterioration since the Body of War documentary, and his decision to finally allow himself to die.

• Audio from my 8/25/05 interview with Tomas Young on The BRAD SHOW (my old syndicated weekend radio program), including the harrowing story of his injury, the experience he had afterward, what brought him to Camp Casey on his honeymoon, and our attempt to paint a sign in hopes of helping the corporate media do the job that America needed them to --- all with the live sounds of Camp Casey in the background --- follows...