Phytoplankton Levels in Oceans Crashed during the 20th Century

According to EurkeAlert!  a new study conducted by researchers at Dalhousie University in Canada, have found that phytoplankton, unicellular organisms that form the basis of the marine food chain, have been declining globally at dramatic rates over the 20th century.

Using an unprecedented collection of historical and recent oceanographic data, a team from Canada's Dalhousie University documented phytoplankton declines of about 1% of the global average per year. This trend is particularly well documented in the Northern Hemisphere and after 1950, and would translate into a decline of approximately 40% since 1950. The scientists found that long-term phytoplankton declines were negatively correlated with rising sea surface temperatures and changing oceanographic conditions.

Lead author of the study, Daniel Boyle, told CBC News, "We should be very concerned … it's extremely disturbing."

Phytoplankton represent a vast array of aquatic plants that live in close proximity to the ocean's surface.  Through photosynthetic activity, these organisms "produce about half the world's oxygen and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."  In addition to forming the basis of marine food chains, phytoplankton are an important component of the carbon cycle and therefore are vital to the stability of the global climate.

The Christian Science Monitor provides a more detailed explanation of the methodology, which entailed three years of combining satellite based data from 1979 and physical measurements as far back as 1899.

After carving up the marine map into 10 regions, the team found a lot of year-to-year variation in phytoplankton populations, as well as regional variations in abundance. But the century-long decline was evident in 8 of 10 ocean regions and was strong enough to offset gains in two others centered in the Indian Ocean.

The overall decline in phytoplankton populations is directly correlated to increases in ocean temperatures.  As temperatures increase, thermal stratification occurs, which prevents nutrients cycling to upper surface levels and diminishes phytoplankton growth.  The findings therefore, "contribute to a growing body of scientific evidence indicating that global warming is altering the fundamentals of marine ecosystems."   Anthony Richardson of the University of Queensland in Australia explains:

The ocean absorbs 40% of the CO₂ humans emit. Phytoplankton, in turn, convert that CO₂ into oxygen or die and bury it at the bottom of the ocean. If the phytoplankton are disappearing, Richardson says, "the ocean as a carbon sink is declining, and what that means is ultimately more CO₂ will stay in the atmosphere instead of being dissolved in the ocean." That will translate into a warmer world, which will wipe out even more phytoplankton.

Human based activities including over-fishing, pollution, biodiversity loss, climate change induced acidification of the oceans, and the creation of permanent dead zones in coastal areas across the planet point to the obvious and undeniable fact that the planet's oceans are in very poor health.   When aquatic ecosystems across the globe collapse, so will terrestrial life, which is inexorability connected to the oceans through the web of life.

Elizabeth Warren: The next Foreclosure Crisis

PBS has an interview with Elizabeth Warren, Chairwoman of the TARP Congressional Oversight Committee, in which she discusses:

1. The value of the newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) in providing Americans with understandable credit card, mortgage, and loan contracts;
2. The upcoming wave of commercial real estate foreclosures. 

http://video.pbs.org/video/1547461509

Tim Geithner (Obama's Treasury tool), has obviously made a number of duplicitous comments about Warren by publically praising her credentals, while putting up internal barrcades to her possible role in the upcoming CFPB agency. As critics of have pointed out, Geithner perceives in Warren a "threat to the very scheme he has utilized to date to hide bank losses, thus keeping the banks solvent and out of bankruptcy court and their existing management teams employed and well-paid." 

On the second issue, Secretary Geithner has publically stated, when questioned by Warren, that he believes there is sufficient management of the overall risks surrounding the commercial real-estate market. As can be seen in the video, Warren civilly implies that Geithner and perhaps the entire Obama financial team are either deluded or incompetent when it comes to effectively discussing the urgency of the problem, the societal ramifications, and realistic solutions, so that the American economy can be made both secure and functioning.  As she says, "The longer you pretend, the longer it takes to get the market where supply and demand match each other."

Evaluating the Likelihood of China Crashing

The overall question of China’s economic situation remains enigmatic. Earlier this year several leading experts expressed grave concerns related to the distinct possibility that China would crash. Renowned short-seller James Chanos was the first to publicly state that his company was actively analyzing methodologies to prosper from an anticipated Chinese economic crash. He considers China to be “on a treadmill to hell” because of its addiction to pushing growth through property development. A point belied by the fact that as much as 60% of the country’s GDP is now contingent upon construction related activities.

In February, Ken Rogoff -Harvard Professor, former chief economist at the IMF, and author of the critically received historical economic analysis ‘This Time it is Different’- warned of a collapse of China’s debt-fuelled bubble. Rogoff refutes the conventional arguments offered over the past decade that China cannot have a crash. History he insists provides no example where an emerging market nation did not succumb to a crisis that sent growth plummeting and markets crash. “You’re starting to see that collapse in property and it’s going to hit the banking system,” states Rogoff in Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

In the past couple of months, a tidal-wave of fund managers have turned on China. Marc Faber, publisher of the Doom, Boom, and Gloom report, anticipates that China will have a hard landing by the first half of 2011. Whereas Hugh Hendry, a UK based hedge fund manager, is developing a stand-alone fund that will exploit the upcoming failures of the Chinese economy.

As of this month, the Shanghai stock market remains at its lowest point in sixteen months. Much of China’s GDP growth can be directly correlated to the value of property, which has soared 40% in the past 18 months alone. Despite attempts by the communist government to quietly reign in excessive speculation and overleveraging in the housing and commercial real estate market, unsustainable growth patterns persist. According to Bloomberg, property prices in 70 Chinese cities rose 12.4% in May; the second-fastest pace on record.

A number of analysts are predicting that any correction will not harm the overall Chinese economy. Optimists point to the fact that “Shanghai’s sales of new homes fell 57 percent in the first six months of the year,” implying that an orderly correction shall occur. Bloomberg news posts the assertion of one analyst that China’s property boom is “cash-driven” rather than “leverage-fuelled,” and as a result, the same dynamics that occurred in the US housing market would not be replicated in China.

On the other hand, a report by Fitch rating agency issued earlier this month and discussed in the NY Times,

Said Chinese banks were increasingly engaging in complex deals that hid the size and nature of their lending, obscuring hundreds of billions of dollars in loans and possibly even masking a coming wave of bad real estate and infrastructure loans.

The report also highlights that Chinese regulators have understated loan growth “in the first half of the year, by 28 percent, or about $190 billion.” The level of deception and fraud occurring in the Chinese banking industry, coupled with the financial innovations created to explicitly conceal risk, are the hallmark attributes of an economic system that is in the early spasms of crashing.

Overall, given the inherent conflict of interests of local governments, who have a vested interest in property speculation, infrastructure expansion, and show projects necessary to enhance their reputations and meet growth quotas, it is unreasonable to assume that these same persons and/or entities would voluntarily halt their long established and until now profitable practices. Established corruption, currency manipulation, a lack of transparent legal rights, collusion of state banks with local businessmen, revolting masses, and an ever growing list of skeptics of the “Chinese miracle” portend that even if the property bubble does not crash the economy, there resides many unstable and troubling fault lines that can.

Fishing fleet working 17 times harder than in 1880s to make same catch

UK researchers who have analyzed fishing data going back 118 years, have found that current trawl fishing fleets have to work 17 times harder to catch the same amount of fish today as it did when most of its boats were powered by sail. 

As described in EurkeAlert!

They found that trawl fish landings peaked in 1937, 14 times higher than today, and the availability of bottom-living fish to the fleet fell by 94 per cent.

The findings are the result of a study using previously overlooked records and suggest the decline in stocks of popular fish such as cod, haddock and plaice is far more profound than previously thought.

The research is published in Nature Communications, the new online science journal from the publishers of Nature.

Ruth Thurstan, lead author of the study from the University of York's Environment Department, said: "We were astonished to discover that we landed over four times more fish into England and Wales in 1889 than we do today.

"For all its technological sophistication and raw power, today's trawl fishing fleet has far less success than its sail-powered equivalent of the late 19th century because of the sharp declines in fish abundance."

The findings suggest that the damage to fisheries is greater and has taken place over a much longer period than previously acknowledged, pre-dating developments such as the Common Fisheries Policy which are usually blamed for declining stocks.

Simon Brockington, Head of Conservation at the Marine Conservation Society and an author of the study, said: "Over a century of intensive trawl fishing has severely depleted UK seas of bottom living fish like halibut, turbot, haddock and plaice.

"It is vital that governments recognise the changes that have taken place. The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy gives an opportunity to set stock protection and recovery targets that are reflective of the historical productivity of the sea."

The study calculated 'landings of fish per unit of fishing power' (LPUP) from 1889 to 2007 to give an indication of changes in the amount of fish available for capture by the fishing fleet. In that time, LPUP declined 500 times for halibut, more than 100 times for haddock and more than 20 times for plaice, wolffish, hake and ling. Cod has declined by 87 per cent.

Professor Callum Roberts, from the University of York's Environment Department, said: "This research makes clear that the state of UK bottom fisheries – and by implication European fisheries, since the fishing grounds are shared – is far worse than even the most pessimistic of assessments currently in circulation.

"European fish stock assessments, and the management targets based on them, go back only 20 to 40 years. These results should supply an important corrective to the short-termism inherent in fisheries management today."

The Ascendancy of the American Thought Police

Dana Priest and William Arkin, at the Washington Post, have compiled and documented in a three-part series the elaborate web of quasi government-corporate agencies, that are ostensibly engaged in intelligence gathering for various factions within the US government.  Multiple agencies have been created to enhance and supplement the vast information gathering capabilities of the state since the 11-September attacks.  The size and scope of the operations is unlike anything available to any other government across the globe.  As a result, a vast and unaccountable network of corporate entities masquerading as government intelligence resources, information technology experts, and foreign security forces have been added to the government's payroll, with in most cases little or no oversight.  The military, intelligence agencies, profit driven corporations, and government/ civilian personnel are all integrated into a nebulous monstrosity that monitors and collects unprecedented levels of information on Americans and foreigners alike and acts with maximum brutality in executing the objectives of its masters.

A bullet point summary of the two-year investigation is listed below:

• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
• An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
• In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
• Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
• Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Implications

The overwhelming conclusion that can be drawn from these news reports is how unbalanced the entire post-9/11 world in Washington has become.  A virtual shadow government that has integrated for-profit corporations and hundreds of thousands of civilians to manage state-secrets with little congressional or internal controls has been created. 

The amount of data being accumulated by the state and its corporate accessories is unprecedented.  For example,

Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases.

The central faults prior to 9/11 were that various levels of government were not cooperating and vital information to prevent an attack were not being aggregated efficiently.  Today, that system is even more unwieldy and inefficient.  More agencies, personnel, and data are flowing through the system.  Few people are capable of understanding or controlling the multiple factions, some working with oppositional goals, within the shadow government.  Overlapping missions and unclear lines of authority and accountability remain the norm.  As proof, each of the major incidents that have emerged in the past year including the lone vigilante attack at Fort Hood, the Times Square bomber, and the underwear-bomber were all missed.

Many critics of the sprawling shadow government describe how as in the case of the Iraq war, corporate agendas for maximizing government largess to benefit individual profits coupled with the revolving corporate-government employment situation, is undermining government control and decision making.  The level of secrecy and unaccountable power that has been transferred into the hands of corporations is equally troublesome to an open and democratic nation.  Historically the military and the intelligence gathering agencies that emerged after the second World War, have been profoundly inefficient, ill-managed, and corrupt.  Thus, It is both naive and irresponsible to imagine that this new outgrowth of the military-industrial complex is a sound use of limited resources and is being used optimally.

Similar to the manner in which defence corporations selectively place themselves in every congressional district, so that budgetary 'pork' is fed to them, the third article in the series outlines the ubiquitous nature of the shadow government.  In the guise of national security, the shadow government's presence has increased across America.  In traditional military towns, entire business districts have been converted to serve special-operations contractors.  Massive sprawling mausoleums concentrating specific agencies have been erected to serve the growing demands of the US government.  Whole cities are now dependant on the secret actions of the shadow government.

The American republic has collapsed in a silent coup and has been usurped by a shadow government.  Corporations, whether they reside on Wall Street or hidden within the national security maze outside of Washington DC, control entire sections of the US state; including legislative, financial, and war-making authority.  The nation is now a de facto plutocracy, precariously sliding everyday into the authoritarian arms of the thought-police.

Nick Clegg, The Iraq Invasion was illegal!

During question period in the British House of Commons this week, Nick Clegg, the current Deputy Prime Minister of the UK coalition government, attacked the morally bankrupt and perennially dishonest Labour Party for its role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  He lashed out at Jack Straw by proclaiming, "We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq."

No one outside the coterie of miserable propagandists who sold the lies advocating for the invasion of Iraq consider the facts in dispute.  Kofi Annan, as Secretary-General of the United Nations, told the BBC in 2004 that the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.  The egregious falsehoods, exaggerations, and manufactured evidence posited by Tony Blair's Labour Party, Bush's bipartisan fraud-fest, and the usual suspects in the media and military-industrial complex now lie tattered and recognized for what it actually was.  The new UK coalition government, unlike the cowards in the Obama administration, have created an Iraq War inquiry to understand the details surrounding the decision to go to war.  Already, some startling details have been exposed.  For example, former MI-5 intel chief Baroness Manningham-Buller stated that "we regarded the threat, the direct threat from Iraq as low."

Tom Ricks summarizes on his Foreign Policy blog,

As for al Qaeda and Iraq, she said, "there was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine, as you have also heard evidence on, which is why Donald Rumsfeld started an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

Furthermore, Baroness Manningham-Buller elaborated that the invasion of Iraq, instead of diminishing the overall risk and likelihood of terrorism on British soil, in fact exacerbated the threat from indigenous Muslim radicals.  The blowback of the 7/7 London transit system was not unexpected.  Most damning of all was her stated opinion that the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action.  Of course, much of this is old news.  Opponents and skeptics of the institutional claims have long been aware of Blair's dodgy dossier consisting of "sexed-up" warnings and memos disclosed by whistle-blowers describing how Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush had predetermined the outcome of invasion.

However, the above revelations were not what caught the attention of the press.  Rather, as the Guardian newspaper outlines, was that others considered Clegg's statement in parliament to be a 'gaffe' with the potential that Britain may face charges in some future International court.  The government, more interested in covering their collective asses, distanced themselves by saying that Clegg was expressing his "long-held view" about the Iraq conflict as leader of the Liberal-Democrats.  Downing Street further stated that the government would await the findings of the Chilcot inquiry prior to reaching a view on the war.  It's an odd statement, since Tony Blair's own attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, prior to the war explicitly said, "I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of [UN security council] resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council."

Brad DeLong on the Hollowness of Economics

One of the embarrassing dirty little secrets of economics is that there is no such thing as economic theory properly so-called. There is simply no set of foundational bedrock principles on which one can base calculations that illuminate situations in the real world. Biologists know that every cell runs off instructions for protein synthesis encoded in its DNA. Chemists start with what the Heisenberg and Pauli principles plus the three-dimensionality of space tell us about stable electron configurations. Physicists start with the four fundamental forces of nature. Economists have none of that. The "economic principles" underpinning their theories are a fraud--not bedrock truths but mere knobs twiddled and tunes so that th right conclusions come out of the analysis.

- Brad DeLong, "Jean-Claude Trichet Rejects the Counsels of History"

Quote of the Day: Palin is the "retarded" clone of Dubya

We have already given one obviously unqualified Western governor a chance to wreck the country in the last decade, and not even the Republican Party that continues to defend and like Bush is so clueless and self-destructive that it would go to the country with a female version of the disaster we just experienced.

According to Daniel Larson at the "American Conservative" magazine, the chances of Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) successfully gaining the nomination of the Republican party in 2012 is zero.  As the above quote elaborates, Palin represents the absolute worst aspects of George W. Bush: evangelical religiosity, ignorance of  both domestic and foreign policy, irrationality, pettiness when confronting criticism, and easily manipulated.  In addition, given establishment requirements, party support, and corporate influences, Larson concludes that it is near impossible to imagine her ascendancy.

It pains me to write about this ignoramus or any possibility that she and the maladroits around her may inflict even more damage to the world than has been done by the Bush Administration (i.e. denial of climate change, destroying the American economy, waging two unsuccessful wars in Middle Eastern countries... etc.).  Palin  herself is representative of both the mindless political theater and the absurd anti-intellectualism that defines so much of American life.  Like Seinfeld, she represents a reality that "nothingness" is somehow a virtue.  Instead of insightful discussions on different policies that may elevate millions out of unemployment and end the Great Recession, we are bombarded with fluff pieces over what Caribou Barbie will say next and whether the Teabag express and their racist invective will shutter the Obama presidency.

Nader Interviews Judge Andrew Napolitano

I encourage everyone to watch and understand the vast scope of criticisms leveled by conservative legal authority Judge Andrew Napolitano.  Despite his affiliation with Fox News and the less than lucid histrionics of his comrades at Fox, the above interview with Ralph Nader -conducted for CSPAN- consolidated the fact that there are issues that are beyond the false media symmetries of right and left or conservative and liberal.

The interview outlines a vast scope of criminality, violations of the constitution, and historically unprecedented actions committed by the Bush White House against American citizens and in many cases perpetuated by the Obama White House.

Napolitano declares that:

1. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should be indicted and prosecuted for torture, domestic spying, and the illegal arrest and confinement of both American citizens and non-American citizens.
2. Questions the legality and morality of the Obama Administration's use of extra-judicial killing of American citizens while outside American territory.
3. Discusses the failure of persons within the Bush WH, such as Jay Bybee, to provide sound legal advice relating to the use of torture.
4. Asks where is this generation's Thurgood Marshall, the venerated Supreme Court Justice who attacked Jim Crow laws as a civil rights litigator.  Despite there being more lawyers than ever in the history of the USA, there remains very few entities (outside the ACLU, CCR, and human rights organizations) or persons willing to challenge the egregious criminality of the American president.

Surprise, Republicans and Sarah Palin Lie Again!

Whereas all politicians and their paid hacks in the MSM constantly lie and ply the public with erroneous data, deliberately misleading statements, and more-often-than-not propaganda, few entities are as skilled in dissembling as the Republican Party.  Case in point is a recent flare up on the right-wing news cycle by Caribou-Barbie (aka Sarah "I'm an idiot" Palin), in which she accused the Obama administration of deliberately not waiving a 1920 law, called the Jones Act, which "requires all shipping between U.S. ports or in U.S. coastal waters to be carried in U.S.-flag ships that are owned and crewed by U.S. citizens." (Kevin Drum, MotherJones.com).

As McClatchy Press states:

From former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to Arizona Sen. John McCain to junior members of the House of Representatives, conservative Republicans have accused President Barack Obama of failing to do all he can to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because he hasn't waived a U.S. maritime law called the Jones Act.

The Republican talking point is that the Obama administration is preventing much needed foreign vessels from engaging in clean-up efforts arising from the Deepwater Horizon rupture, which still remains uncapped to this day.

The central problem with this bit of hysterics is that "Maritime law experts, government officials and independent researchers say that the claim is false. The Jones Act isn't an impediment at all, they say, and it hasn't blocked anything."  Furthermore, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen said that no Jones Act waivers were necessary, since all the activities were occurring outside the 3-mile limit to which the act was applicable.

On Tuesday the State Department announced that new offers of aid would be accepted from 12 foreign countries and international organizations, but spokesman P.J. Crowley noted that booms donated by Mexico, Norway and Brazil had been in use since May 11,and that 24 foreign vessels from nine foreign countries already have been helping with the cleanup.

With the exception of McClatchy, most in the press did not find it odd that ex-Governor Palin (technically 1/2-term Governor and full time moron), who claimed to understand oil politics better than any past or present governor, doesn't understand the basic facts surrounding the maritime law she is quoting.  Senator John McCain, another lying dingbat, stated that the Jones Act was subverting the recovery and was costing Americans jobs!  Others were quick to realize that the preening of the Republicans had little to do with maritime conservation or assisting the Gulf coast community, but rather an attempt to push for the removal of a federal law that limited foreign interests from controlling maritime trade within US waters.

The perennial willingness of Republicans to sell out national interests to the first multinational corporation with a fist-full of dollars, is as close to treasonous as it gets.