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Asia's highest mountains have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Damian Carrington - Feb. 08 (News Report) - The world's greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that aro

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The New York Times public editor's very public utterance

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Clay Shirky - Jan. 13 (Opinion) - Thursday, Arthur Brisbane, the public editor of the New York Times, went to his readers with a question : "I'm looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." Brisbane (who, as public editor, speaks only for himself, not the Times) referred to two recent stories: the claim that Clarence Thomas had "misunderstood" a financial reporting form when he left out key information, and Mitt Romney's assertion that President Obama gives speeches "apologising" for America. Brisbane asked whether news reporters should have the freedom to investigate and respond to those comments. The reaction from readers was swift, voluminous, negative and incredulous. "Is this a joke? THIS IS YOUR JOB." "If the purpose of the NYT is to be an inoffensive container for ad copy, ...

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How will technology influence the news in 2012?

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - Predicting the next year's news is a fool's errand, but looking at technological trends could give us a hint At the beginning of 2011, aging dictators ruled Egypt and Libya, and despotism was the nearly unquestioned reality in most of the Middle East. The eurozone was seeing trouble at its edges, but wasn't heading toward collapse. News International had successfully covered up most of its rampant bad acts, and Rupert Murdoch was on the verge of even greater control over British media and politics. Anyone who might have predicted how utterly and rapidly those realities would change might have been branded a lunatic. Which is one reason why the annual journalistic ritual of making predictions about the year ahead is a fool's errand. With that in mind, let me offer instead some observations about the technology and media trends we've seen in past months, and how they might play out in 2012. In many cases, the trajectory is deeply worrisome. But I remain an eternal optimist in the face of ...

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This bastardised libertarianism makes 'freedom' an instrument of oppression

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Dec. 20 (Opinion) - It's the disguise used by those who wish to exploit without restraint, denying the need for the state to protect the 99% Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice? In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws; big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor. ...

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Our leadership is dire, but we mustn't despise government | Jeffrey Sachs

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Jeffrey Sachs, The Guardian - Dec. 17 - Our leaderships, in thrall to big business, are failing in so many places all at the same time. But we can't give up on them The year 2011 will be remembered as the year of failed summits. Governments proved themselves time and again to be failures at addressing the growing crises engulfing the world, whether the eurozone debacle, climate change, or budget politics in the US and Europe. Next year is likely to be worse, as electoral politics will further impede decision-making in the US, France and several other countries. Why should governance be so poor in so many places at the same time? There are several factors at play. Globalisation has undermined the manufacturing base of most of the high-income economies, costing millions of jobs and leading to stagnant or falling living standards for a large part of the workforce, especially those with basic skills and modest education attainment. The US has lost around 8-9 million manufacturing jobs since the peak in that sector in 1979, just as ...

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U.S. District Attorney Goodwin: Alpha "not a life, it's not a being, it can't go to jail."

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Writing Corner - By Beth Wellington - Dec. 07 (Opinion) - Montcoal, WV. 3:27 PM on Monday, April 5, 2010. It was the worst U.S. coal-mining disaster in nearly 40 years. Twenty months ago, just across the river from Coal River Mountain on Cherry Pond Mountain near its mountaintop removal mine, Massey Energy's underground mine at Upper Big Branch exploded.

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Is the end of the world really nigh?

Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Alok Jha - Nov. 20 (Special Report) - All too real are the human-caused threats born of climate change, excess pollution, depletion of natural resources and the madness of nuclear weapons. We tinker with our genes and atoms at our own peril. Nanotechnology, synthetic biology and genetic modification offer much potential in giving us better food to eat, safer drugs and a cleaner world, but they could also go wrong if misapplied or if we charge on without due care.

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CIA urged to be more open about climate change

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Suzanne Goldenberg - Nov. 15 (News Report) - After a year of epic weather, drought, heatwaves, hurricanes and floods, America's intelligence establishment has come out with a bold new suggestion: maybe it's time the CIA stopped treating climate change as a secret. A new report from the Defence Science Board – a US government agency – urges the CIA to step outside its traditional culture of secrecy and begin sharing the intelligence it has been gathering on climate change. The report, Trends and Implications of Climate Change for National and International Security, goes as far as to recommend the establishment of a new agency devoted to the study of climate change – one that would operate in the open and transparent manner so alien to the CIA. The report is the latest in the series of blows to CIA's climate centre, which has been struggling to justify its existence to the public since its establishment ...

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The 1% are the very best destroyers of wealth the world has ever seen

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Nov. 08 (Opinion) - Our common treasury in the last 30 years has been captured by industrial psychopaths. That's why we're nearly bankrupt If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire. The claims that the ultra-rich 1% make for themselves – that they are possessed of unique intelligence or creativity or drive – are examples of the self-attribution fallacy. This means crediting yourself with outcomes for which you weren't responsible. Many of those who are rich today got there because they were able to capture certain jobs. This capture owes less to talent and intelligence than to a combination of the ruthless exploitation of others and accidents of birth, as such jobs are taken disproportionately by people born in certain places and into certain classes. The findings of the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of a Nobel economics prize , are devastating to the beliefs that financial high-fliers entertain about themselves. He discovered that their ...

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The Republican 'voter fraud' fraud

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Diane Roberts - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - All over the US, GOP lawmakers have engineered schemes to make voting more difficult. Well, if you can't win elections fairly… Presidential candidate and angry white man Newt Gingrich seems nostalgic for the good old Jim Crow poll tax days: he has called for people to have to pass an American historical literacy test before they can vote . His colleagues on the anti-democratic right have not gone quite so far, but 38 states, most of them controlled by Republicans, are concocting all kinds of ingenious ways to suppress the vote. A new report from New York University's Brennan Center for Justice says that more than five million people – enough to swing the 2012 presidential election – could find themselves disenfranchised, especially if they're poor or old or students or black or Latino. Hyper-conservative governors and legislators, working with templates produced by a shady cabal called the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) , have pushed through laws to cut the number of voting ...

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Do mobile, the cloud and social spell the end of the PC era?

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jean-Louis Gassée - Oct. 24 (Opinion) - These are the three interdependent forces that power the biggest wave of growth, change, and destruction I've seen since I have been allowed to take part in the high-tech industry. In the beginning (or mine, anyway), back in 1968 when I was, miraculously, offered a salary to be part of HP France there was the mainframe. IBM – "The Company" – reigned supreme, a dynasty that seemed unassailable. The IBMer wore a suit and tie when approaching the punch card feeder. Big Blue's competitors, the BUNCH, were also called the Seven Dwarves because their combined market share couldn't compare to IBM's dominance.

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Wall Street Journal circulation scam claims senior Murdoch executive

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Nick Davies - Oct. 12 (News) - One of Rupert Murdoch's most senior European executives has resigned following Guardian inquiries about a circulation scam at News Corporation's flagship newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. The Guardian found evidence that the Journal had been channelling money through European companies in order to secretly buy thousands of copies of its own paper at a knock-down rate, misleading readers and advertisers about the Journal's true circulation.

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McChrystal: US lacks knowledge to bring end to war in Afghanistan

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Oct. 07 (News) - McChrystal says the US and its allies are only 'a little better than' 50% of the way to reaching their war goals The US began the war in Afghanistan with a "frighteningly simplistic" view of the country and even 10 years later lacks knowledge that could help bring the conflict to a successful end, a former top commander said on Thursday. Retired Army General Stanley McChrystal said in remarks at the Council on Foreign Relations that the US and its Nato allies are only "a little better than" 50% of the way to reaching their war goals. Of the remaining tasks to be accomplished, he said the most difficult may be to create a legitimate government that ordinary Afghans can believe in and that can serve as a counterweight to the Taliban. McChrystal, who commanded coalition forces in 2009-10 and was forced to resign in a flap over a magazine article, said the US entered Afghanistan in October 2001 with too little knowledge of Afghan culture. "We didn't know enough and we still don't know ...

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Afghanistan and Iraq wars not worth fighting, say a third of US veterans

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Oct. 05 (News Report) - One in three US veterans of the post-9/11 military believes the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were not worth fighting, and a majority think ...Poll finds pride in military, but not for Afghanistan, Iraq wars

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10 myths about Afghanistan

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jonathan Steele - Sep. 28 (Special Report) - In 1988, the Soviet army left Afghanistan after a concerted campaign by the western-backed mujahideen. But since then, many enduring myths have grown up about the war-torn country. In his new book, Jonathan Steele sorts the fact from the fiction 1. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions when foreign invaders were humiliated. But there have also been many cases when foreign armies penetrated the country and inflicted major defeats. In 330BC, Alexander the Great marched through the area of central Asia that is now Afghanistan, meeting little opposition. More than a millennium later, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan also brushed resistance aside. Since Afghanistan emerged as a modern state, there have been three wars with Britain. The British invasion of 1839 produced initial victory for the intruders followed by stunning defeat followed by a second victory. In 1878, the British invaded again. ...

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Melting ice is Earth's warning signal – and we cannot ignore it

Sun, 25 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Damian Carrington - Sep. 25 - From the Himalayas to the Arctic, the signs of danger are visible Ice is the white flag being waved by our planet, under fire from the atmospheric attack being mounted by humanity. From the frosted plains of the Arctic ice pack to the cool blue caverns of the mountain glaciers, the dripping away of frozen water is the most crystal clear of all the Earth's warning signals. It relies on neither the painstaking compiling of temperature records back through history nor the devilish complexity of predicting the future with supercomputers. Ice on Earth is simply and unambiguously disappearing. Last week saw the annual summer minimum of the Arctic ice cap, which has now shrunk to the lowest level satellites have ever recorded. The ice at the roof of the human world is faring little better: mountain glaciers are diminishing at accelerating and historic rates . The lower glaciers are doomed. Kilimanjaro may be bare within a decade, with the Pyrenees set to be ice-free by mid-century and ...

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Jimmy Carter: 'We never dropped a bomb. We never fired a bullet. We never went to war'

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Carole Cadwalladr - Sep. 11 - He may live a modest life in a one-horse town, but Jimmy Carter, now 86, retains his global vision. And 30 years after leaving the White House, the peanut farmer turned president is still a man on mission. In Plains, Georgia, we found the 39th US president full of energy… and determined to make a difference Where does Jimmy Carter live? Well, close your eyes and imagine the kind of house an ex-president of the United States might live in. The sort of residence befitting the former leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Got it? Right, now scrub that clean from your mind and instead imagine the sort of house where a moderately successful junior accountant and his family might live. It's what in America is called a "ranch house", or, as we'd say, "a bungalow". There are no porticoes. No columns. No sweeping lawns. There's just a small brick single-storey structure that Jimmy and his wife, Rosalynn, built on Woodland Drive back in 1961 when he was a peanut farmer and she was a peanut ...

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Tax us more, say wealthy Europeans

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Helen Pidd - Aug. 29 (News Report) - German group latest to volunteer for higher contributions, saying country could raise €100bn in two years with a 5% wealth tax First it was Warren Buffett announcing that he and his chums had been "coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress". Then Liliane Bettencourt, France's richest woman, who was at the centre of a tax scandal last year, signed a letter along with 15 other billionaires begging to make a special contribution to the treasury to help drag France out of the financial crisis. Even an Italian got in the action , with the boss of Ferrari saying that as he was rich, it was only "right" that he stump up more cash. Now, as both France and Spain consider introducing a wealth tax, a group of 50 rich Germans have joined the "tax me harder" movement by renewing their open call to Angela Merkel to "stop the gap between rich and poor getting even bigger". The German group, Vermögende für eine Vermögensabgabe (The Wealthy for a Capital Levy) is the latest ...

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Foreign policy: intervention after Libya

Wed, 24 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - Aug. 24 (Opinion) - It can be said that in narrow military terms the west's action over Libya has worked, and that politically there was justification It is too early to claim that the Nato intervention in Libya has been a success in the full meaning of that word. It will be weeks before we have a sense of where Libya is heading, months before there is any certainty about its future, and years before we can properly assess the impact of the decision to use force to aid the rebels. But it can now reasonably be said that in narrow military terms it worked, and that politically there was some retrospective justification for its advocates as the crowds poured into the streets of Tripoli to welcome the rebel convoys earlier this week. The argument that we had foolishly gone in on one side in a civil war must be weakened by such scenes, which suggest that the picture of a majority wishing to see the back of Gaddafi is closer to the truth than the alternative picture of a people more or less evenly divided between ...

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Libya: the hunt for Gaddafi goes on

Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Luke Harding, Chris Stephen, Julian Borger - Aug. 23 (News Report) - The battle for Tripoli turned into a manhunt for Muammar Gaddafi, as pockets controlled by loyalist forces dwindled rapidly and the Libyan leader's last vestiges of power fell away at the end of a 42-year dictatorship. Libyan state television, the vehicle for relentless government propaganda throughout the Gaddafi years, went off the air as rebels seized its transmitters. Government troops kept up resistance in some areas of the city but were pummelled by Nato warplanes, which struck at least 40 targets in and around the city in 48 hours – the most intense bombing since the air campaign started more than five months ago.

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Why Google had to have Motorola Mobility

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Dan Gillmor - Aug. 17 (Opinion) - The acquisition has provoked comment about defensive buying of patents, but Google surely has more ambition than that For several years now, Google has been following a vow made by former CEO Eric Schmidt: mobile first. New CEO Larry Page is taking that dictum to a new level by announcing a deal to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5bn . The implications of this deal depend entirely on how Google plans to use Motorola. If, as some claim, the deal is more about obtaining Motorola's mobile patent portfolio than anything else, we can expect escalating patent warfare between technology giants and limited innovation beyond that. If, however, Google intends to operate the business it is acquiring, we may see some broad and sweeping changes in the technology industry. If the deal is chiefly about obtaining Motorola's mobile patent portfolio, then Google would likely spin off the hardware end of the company and keep the software and patents. The patents would be vital weapons in its competition with ...

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China denies inspecting US helicopter used in Bin Laden raid

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Tania Branigan - Aug. 17 (News Report) - Beijing says claims that Pakistan gave it access to wreckage of Black Hawk aircraft are 'groundless and preposterous' China has denied claims that Pakistan allowed it see the wrecked US helicopter used in the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. In a one-line statement – Beijing's first response to the allegations – the defence ministry described the reports as "groundless and preposterous". The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Pakistan gave Chinese military engineers access to the aircraft , citing US sources close to the White House and CIA. It said the officials were allowed to survey the wreckage of the modified Black Hawk and take samples of its "stealth" skin before it was handed back to the US. The New York Times also quoted American intelligence sources who said that Chinese officials had photographed the remains of the helicopter, adding that the information was based on intercepted phone calls. Pakistani officials had hinted after the raid in Abbottabad that they might ...

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Roger Ailes and the rise of Fox News

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Tim Dickinson - Aug. 11 (News Report) - Even Rupert Murdoch is afraid of Roger Ailes, the paranoid boss of Fox News. But 'the Chairman' is using his power to make Americans more rightwing, more ignorant and ever more terrified At the Fox News Chrismas party the year the network overtook arch-rival CNN in the cable ratings, tipsy employees were herded down to the basement of a midtown bar in New York. As they gathered around a television mounted high on the wall, an image flashed to life, glowing bright in the darkened tavern: the MSNBC logo. A chorus of boos erupted among the Fox faithful. The CNN logo followed, and the catcalls multiplied. Then a third slide appeared, with a telling twist. In place of the logo for Fox News was a beneficent visage: the face of the network's founder. The man known to his fiercest loyalists simply as "the Chairman" – Roger Ailes. "It was as though we were looking at Mao," recalls Charlie Reina, a former Fox News producer. The Foxistas went wild. They let the dogs out. Woof! Woof! Woof! Even those ...

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Global warming is a litmus test for US Republicans

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Raymond S. Bradley - Aug. 03 (News Analysis) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney crossed a dangerous party line when he stated his belief in anthropogenic climate changeMitt Romney, arguably the leading Republican candidate for president of the United States in the 2012 election, recently significantly diminished his prospects for obtaining the support he needs from the right wing of his party. How did he do this? He simply declared that he believes the Earth is warming, and that human activities are responsible. To most scientists, such a statement would be considered fairly innocuous, and an accurate assessment of current understanding. But to a large fraction of the US Republican party, this is a completely unacceptable position - ranking alongside gay marriage, gun control and abortion rights. Anthropogenic climate change has become a litmus test for Republicans in the United States.If you want to appeal to the hard core of the party - those whom you need in order to obtain the party's nomination - you simply can not acknowledge what almost every national science academy and scientific organisation has accepted for many years. In fact, many other prominent Republicans, sensing the winds of retribution, have already back-tracked on whatever previous statements they might have made, if they contained even a whiff of climate reality. Given the importance of getting the United States on board to obtain a comprehensive international agreement on controlling greenhouse gases, this dismissal of scientific evidence about global warming is both sad and alarming.Climate scientists on the frontlines of this battle have suffered badly from the poisonous political atmosphere. Rightwing blogs and talk radio demagogues have promoted the idea that climate science is a worthless charade, where data are simply manipulated to obtain a politically motivated result. Scientists have been abused on blogs and via emails and some have even been physically threatened. Government officials have misused their positions to intimidate and harass prominent scientists, following a strategy of attacking the messenger when they don't like hearing the message. A leading Republican senator asked the Justice Department to investigate 17 climate scientists (myself included) for committing fraud and other crimes. How have we arrived at this sorry state?In order to understand the current state of play, one has to recognise that the issue of global warming is being completely manipulated by a group of individuals, businesses and organisations that have entrenched financial interests in making sure that the United States does not enact any legislation to control greenhouse gas emissions. At the extreme, these groups believe in complete market fundamentalism - that free markets, stripped of all constraints, will take care of any and all problems that we may face. To bolster this fundamentalist strategy, they provide major financial support to organisations that promote nonsensical ideas, such as global warming is a hoax and the IPCC reports are full of errors.They also flood the electoral system with money, to ensure that like-minded rightwing politicians are elected to Congress. These politicians then dutifully hold hearings, inviting hand-picked scientists (often with minimal qualifications in climate science) to provide testimony which sows the seeds of doubt about the reality of global warming. The political objectives of these hearings are rarely discussed by the media. The general public just hears that more scientists disagree about an issue they find hard to deal with (which it is) and so they conclude that if scientists can't agree, why should they support legislation to control emissions? In this way, the cynical but very effective strategy of the rightwing runs its course, and the US sits on its hands while atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations approach levels not seen on Earth for more than 2.5 million years.If climate scientists were indeed all working together to manipulate data and create a fictitious scenario of the future, that would require a truly remarkable feat of coordination, and a sense of common purpose. What could the motivation of this cohort be? The answer was given to me by Congressman James Sensenbrenner (remarkably, now vice-chairman of the US House committee on science, space and technology). This high-ranking Republican carefully explained that the Kyoto protocol was a conspiracy by developing nations to cripple the US economy. Since these developing countries (apparently) could not compete on a level playing field with the US, they had devised the Kyoto treaty to tilt things in their direction, and climate scientists were complicit in this strategy. To those who subscribe to Sensenbrenner's bizarre idea, it is only a small step further to frame the argument in patriotic terms. If you support Kyoto (or its goals) you must be anti-American, or at the very least a socialist. Which brings me back to Mitt Romney.The Republican party in the United States is now in thrall to the extreme right wing, which is in turn financed and coached by those with the financial muscle to promote their narrow ideological agendas. To obtain the backing of these groups, you have to toe the line, and speak the words their dogma requires: global warming is not happening, perhaps even a hoax; whatever warming has occurred is just a natural oscillation; even if humans had something to do with it, it's not a big deal and we can adapt to it. And besides, we can't afford to control greenhouse gases, as such action will result in massive job losses. For a politician seeking the party's nomination for president, it is a dangerous strategy to cross the line on this topic.To the idealogues who have invested millions to support their political factotums in the US Congress, their money has been well spent, as meaningful legislation to control greenhouse gases has virtually disappeared from the congressional agenda. But not content with that success, they have now drawn a line in the sand for those seeking political office; global warming is off limits entirely. It is not something they want to be discussed at all.Meanwhile, the rest of the world has recognised the reality of global warming and acknowledged the real dangers that it poses for the future. Although taking steps to address the matter is difficult, many countries have embraced the opportunity to reduce energy consumption, implement conservation strategies and promote new technologies that involve energy production from non-carbon based fuels. Politicians who embrace these strategies represent the future. Those who don't will simply become footnotes in history. Romney made the right decision - on this topic, at least.• Raymond S Bradley is director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts AmherstClimate change scepticismClimate changeClimate changeRepublicansUnited StatesUS politicsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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UK sails ahead in offshore wind power

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Fiona Harvey - Jul. 27 (News) - The UK has sailed ahead in offshore wind power generation in the past six months, building more offshore windfarms than any other country in the world, and accounting for almost all of the turbines erected in European waters this year.

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