Thawing permafrost covering almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere could "significantly amplify global warming" at a time when the world is already struggling to reign in rising greenhouse gases, a U.N. report said on Tuesday.
The warning comes as United Nations climate negotiations enter a second day, with the focus on the Kyoto Protocol - a legally-binding emissions cap that expires this year and remains the most significant international achievement in the fight against global warming. Countries are hoping to negotiate an extension to the pact that runs until at least 2020.
Thawing permafrost to boost global warming
Alex Baer: Just What You Needed: More Recipes for Dressing
The return to work -- Monday, after a long, holiday weekend: This is such a grim, dour moment in life that there's only one known antidote. And with that, we hereby Break Glass and Pull Switch In Case of Emergency -- and are rewarded with underpants news.
The good news: There is actually some underwear news. The not-so-good news: There wasn't much. News, that is -- although, now that you mention it, unmentionables are getting so tiny anymore that there's not much of them in that sense, either.
Well, to paraphrase a war criminal: You go to work the Monday following a long holiday weekend with the underwear you have, not the underwear you wish you had.
Prairie2: The Real Takers
Selected numbers appear to show consumer spending is way up, thanks to the 'black' days, cyber day, and on and on with the hype. A closer looks suggests it's really more like a one or two percent increase for the quarter; it's really all about building up a shopping frenzy. Are consumers really spending more at all? Or are they simply desperate to stretch their ever declining incomes to meet pent up demand to replace worn out consumer goods?
Then there is the gnawing need to provide the American dream for yourself and your family. It's not that people really feel the need to buy more junk from China, it's that they know deep down that they're in trouble. And they want so badly to kid themselves that they are still middle class. The evidence for this is that consumer debt is way up. The business channel folks actually point to this increase in debt as proof that the economy is turning around, and there is a certain amount of truth to that, in the same way a soap bubble is a new house.
Antarctic microbes thrive without sunlight
In a world without sunlight, microbes still seem to thrive in an Antarctic lake iced over for at least 2,800 years, biologists report.
Lake Vida, a chilly brine pool covered by more than 50 feet of ice, resides in East Antarctica. Biologists led by Alison Murray of the Desert Research Institute in Reno report that 2005 and 2010 core samples reveal aquatic microbes thrive in its yellowish waters, in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Former Florida GOP leaders say voter suppression was reason they pushed new election law
A new Florida law that contributed to long voter lines and caused some to abandon voting altogether was intentionally designed by Florida GOP staff and consultants to inhibit Democratic voters, former GOP officials and current GOP consultants have told The Palm Beach Post.
Republican leaders said in proposing the law that it was meant to save money and fight voter fraud. But a former GOP chairman and former Gov. Charlie Crist, both of whom have been ousted from the party, now say that fraud concerns were advanced only as subterfuge for the law’s main purpose: GOP victory.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak announces he’s leaving politics
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly announced Monday that he was leaving politics and would not run in parliamentary elections in January, quashing speculation that he might unite with other centrist candidates to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Barak, who declared that he would step down when a new government is formed after the election, said he felt he had “exhausted my involvement in politics.”
It's Mostly Punishment ; Testimonies by Veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces From Gaza and the Occupied Territories
“There is no country on Earth that would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders,” President Barack Obama said at a press conference last week. He drew on this general observation in order to justify Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel’s most recent military campaign in the Gaza Strip.
In describing the situation this way, he assumes, like many others, that Gaza is a political entity external and independent of Israel. This is not so. It is true that Israel officially disengaged from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, withdrawing its ground troops and evacuating the Israeli settlements there. But despite the absence of a permanent ground presence, Israel has maintained a crushing control over Gaza from that moment until today.
Why So Secretive? The Trans-Pacific Partnership as Global Coup
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the most secretive and “least transparent” trade negotiations in history.
Luckily for the populations and societies that will be affected by the agreement, there are public research organizations and alternative media outlets campaigning against it – and they’ve even released several leaks of draft agreement chapters. From these leaks, which are not covered by mainstream corporate-controlled news outlets, we are able to get a better understanding of what the Trans-Pacific Partnership actually encompasses.
The suffering of Sderot: how its true inhabitants were wiped from Israel's maps and memories
The people of Huj - now almost forgotten - had helped the Jewish Haganah army escape the British. The thanks they got was to be sent into Gaza as refugees.
I think I found the village of Huj this weekend – but the road sign said “Sederot”. The world knows it as Sderot, the Israeli city where the Hamas rockets fall. Even Barack Obama has been there. But Huj has a lot to do with this little story.
By my map calculations, it lies, long destroyed, across the fields from a scruffy recreation centre near the entrance to Sderot, a series of shabby villas on a little ring road where Israeli children were playing on the Shabat afternoon.
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