A Hell Week For Global Warming Alarmists: Crumbling Consensus, Inconvenient Data And Policy Rejection
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | November 5, 2015
It hasn’t been a good week for the global warming alarmists. Three events have rocked the movement and caused alarmists to go into a state of alarm.
Putin calls global warming “a fraud”
The first event Russian President Vladimir Putin, who used to play along with the issue, has come out and called global warming science “a fraud,” one that is “designed to restrain industrial development.” According to the New York Times, Putin’s skepticism is based on Russian scientists having done “very, very extensive work trying to understand all sides of the climate debate” and that it is “clear that the climate is a complicated system” and that “the evidence presented for the need to ‘fight’ global warming was rather unfounded.”
NASA satellite measurements refute preposterous PIK models
The second event is described at the Swiss online daily Tagesanzeiger which presents a vivid example as to why people like Putin don’t believe the wild climate alarmism: There’s a huge chasm between the scary model projections coming from “leading” climate institutes and the real observations themselves.
The Swiss daily begins by writing that the Germany-based Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) projects that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could “rapidly disintegrate” and cause sea levels to rise 3 meters, all based on “their own model simulations,” which incorporate “feedback effects.” The Tagesanzeiger writes, however, that the PIK was unable to provide “a reason for the loss of stability in West Antarctica.” The Swiss online daily in effect presents a PIK theory that is fraught with assumptions, and is ultra-lean on recorded data.
To illustrate that there is a total lack of consensus with respect to Antarctica, the Tagesanzeiger brings up the latest NASA study by Zwally et al, citing Breitbart : “Antarctica is not shrinking – it is growing,” and writes that the NASA study “completely contradicts” the PIK model projections. The Tagesanzeiger continues:
A satellite survey by NASA tells a different story. It contradicts a number of other studies, which are mostly based on rough estimations and assumptions.”
Poland refuses to ratify Kyoto treaty in Paris
The third set of bad news to come out over the past week is that Poland’s new president, Andrzej Duda, refuses to extend the UN Kyoto Treaty until 2020 and that this “blocks the ratification process” just a month before the UN climate summit in Paris (COP21). Duda is requesting “a more detailed analysis of the climate matter,” writing in a statement:
Binding Poland to an international agreement that will affect Poland’s economy and the therein connected social costs should require a detailed analysis of the legal and economic impacts. These impacts have not been sufficiently explained.”
Greenpeace Poland called Duda’s announcement a “bad sign” which threatens to stall Europe’s movement on emissions limitation.
Asia moves ahead with coal power plant expansion
Also the news tell us that many, especially poorer, developing countries aren’t taking PIK climate science seriously at all. The London-based Global Warming Policy Foundation here writes that “in Asia alone this year power companies are building more than 500 coal-fired plants, with at least a thousand more on planning boards.”
Putin signs law allowing retaliatory sequestration of foreign property in Russia
RT | November 4, 2015
Russia’s president has signed legislation enabling countermeasures in the case of the wrongful arrest of Russian state property abroad. The law, based on reciprocity, curtails the jurisdictional immunity of the country in question if not agreed otherwise.
The document was published on Russia’s official legal information website and therefore has come into effect.
According to the new law, the jurisdictional immunities of a foreign state and its property could be limited on the territory of Russia on the principle of mutuality, in the case that the jurisdictional immunity of Russia has been found to be suffering limitations on the sovereign territory of that country.
The provisions of the law would not be applied if Russia and the other country have reached an agreement to act differently.
The judicial immunity of a foreign entity that has filed a legal action, entered legal argument or has taken any other substantive action in a Russian court will be considered revoked.
The revoking of a foreign country’s judicial immunity in any given legal argument is irrevocable and will be applied to all stages of judicial examinations.
Read more:
Russia will ‘protect its interests’ in European assets freeze – Putin
Why Andrew Cuomo’s Pollinator Task Force Won’t Save New York’s Bees
By Tracy Frisch | Independent Science News | November 2, 2015
As in other parts of North America, beekeepers in New York have been experiencing unsustainable losses of honeybee colonies. In 2014-15, annual colony losses in New York reached 54 per cent, according to the Bee Informed Partnership survey. And though losses were lower in preceding years, they consistently exceeded the economic threshold of 15 percent loss. At great expense, beekeepers have been able to recoup their winter and summer losses, but for declining native bee species the prospects are even less rosy. For example, the rusty-patched bumblebee (Bombus affinis) for example, once common in New York and the Northeastern US, is now a candidate for the endangered species act.
An impressive worldwide body of scientific evidence implicates neonicotinoids as a major contributor to the decline of honeybee and wild bee populations (e.g. Lu et al., 2014). This is due to a combination of their acute toxicity, sub-lethal, intergenerational, neurotoxic, and immune system effects, their systemic behavior in plants and their persistence in soil and water (See the IUCN’s Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Impacts of Systemic Pesticides on Biodiversity and Ecosystems, 2015 (1)). This relatively new family of insecticides is now believed to be the most commonly used global pesticide.
Unlike Europe and Ontario, Canada, the US has not acted to restrict the use of neonicotinoids. However, the federal government has specifically urged states to create pollinator protection plans. Some states are working on them and a few have completed them (2).
But at the first meeting of the New York State’s Pollinator Task Force (Aug 6 2015), commercial beekeeper Jim Doan was flabbergasted to learn that state officials had appointed two representatives of the national pesticide industry to the 12-member panel. “It’s very difficult for a beekeeper to think he can get a fair shake,” he commented.
Consequently, I decided to see for myself. I attended the September 11 and October 1 Task Force meetings and listened to the recording of the August 6 meeting.
The New York State Pollinator Task Force
The NY state Task Force was set in motion by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
“Pollinators are crucial to the health of New York’s environment, as well as the strength of our agricultural economy,” Cuomo said in his announcement. “By developing a statewide action plan, we are expanding our efforts to protect these species and our unparalleled natural resources, and making an important step forward in our commitment to New York’s ecological and economic future.”
Thus, on April 23, 2015 Cuomo directed the state departments of agriculture and markets (NYSDAM) and environmental conservation (NYSDEC) to develop a state pollinator protection plan, involving stakeholders and research institutions in the process.
By July stakeholders were receiving invitations to serve on the state Pollinator Task Force, which was constituted with 12 “advisors” from the private and NGO sectors. Officials from NYSDAM and DEC serve as co-chairs. In addition, Cornell IPM program director Jennifer Grant sat with Task Force members and played an advisory role, though not as a Task Force member.
Task Force membership
In terms of its personnel, three groups represent pesticide interests on the Task Force: CropLife America and Responsible Industry Supporting the Environment (RISE) are the pesticide industry’s agricultural and non-agricultural trade groups respectively. Both are headquartered at the same Washington DC office. The NYS Agribusiness Association is the third agrochemical group. Dan Digiacomandrea, a technical sales specialist at Bayer CropScience, one of two makers of neonicotinoids, attended one Task Force meeting as that group’s alternate.
Agriculture also got three seats, with appointees from the state farm bureau, state vegetable growers association and the fruit sector. The state vegetable growers consistently sent an alternate, Rick Zimmerman. His resume includes many years as a Farm Bureau lobbyist followed by a career as NYSDAM deputy commissioner. Today he heads up the Northeast Agribusiness and Feed Alliance. The state turf and landscape association has a seat, too.
Three NGOs were appointed to the Task Force: The Nature Conservancy, Audubon New York and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Member Erin Crotty, who is executive director at Audubon NY, previously served as DEC commissioner under Republican Governor Pataki. NRDC, which has sued EPA on neonicotinoids, was represented by one of two alternating attorneys at each meeting. Like the aforementioned industry representatives, no one from these organizations appeared to have any specific expertise on pollinators. The first two NGOs proposed ways to increase pollinator habitat but did not indicate concerns about pesticides.
Finally, beekeepers were apportioned two seats. With 12 hives, hobby beekeeper Stephen Wilson has chaired the Apiary Industry Advisory Committee for over 15 years. The other representative is Empire State Honey Producers Association president Mark Berninghausen, a small commercial migratory beekeeper from St. Lawrence County. This group has about 100 members out of the 3,000 or 4,000 beekeepers in the state.
The state has also been accepting public comments (though this was apparently not publicized and no deadline has been announced). These comments must be submitted to the governor’s office, not to the Task Force directly (initially NYSDAM was accepting them). As of this writing, these comments have not been shared with task force members.
Given the make-up of New York’s Pollinator Task Force — one-quarter pesticide industry plus one-third agriculture and turf care industries – and the allegiances of the two convening agencies, the complex issue of pesticides was therefore always likely to be handled with kid gloves.
The timeline and the content
At the kickoff meeting task force advisors had a chance to lay out their positions on what the state should do to protect bees. The second meeting focused on research needs and the third dealt with habitat enhancement and best management practices (BMPs).
Presentations took up much of the second and third meetings. For example, a series of managers from six state agencies described their land management practices and initiatives to provide habitat in respect to bees.
A highpoint was the talk by Cornell’s new honeybee extension entomologist Emma Mullen. A Canadian who just moved to the US, she had been part of the team of scientists that worked on Ontario’s Pollinator Health Protection Plan. Particularly illuminating was her explanation of the province’s new program to decrease the corn and soybean acreage planted with neonicotinoid-treated seeds by 80% by 2017. She also outlined current Cornell research on bees.
NYSDAM commissioner Richard Ball, a vegetable grower, chaired the meetings and NYSDEC deputy commissioner Eugene Leff played a supporting role. Leff, whose portfolio includes pesticide regulation, previously presided over another stakeholder task force charged with dealing with an equally polarizing issue: preventing pesticide pollution of Long Island’s groundwater. As with the pollinator task force, pesticide and agricultural interests were well represented on Long Island. (The 126-page strategy document that came out of that task force’s work indicates that these interest groups succeeded in delaying any restrictions on suspect pesticides.)
To frame the initial Pollinator Task Force discussion, Commissioner Ball reiterated what has come to seem like the official US dogma on bee decline — there is no single cause and we must consider multiple areas of concern. While the list of pollinator threats varies, USDA, EPA and institutions like Cornell cite factors such as habitat loss, pests and pathogens, pesticides, genetics and/or climate change when they state that view.
Indeed, the most notable feature of the meetings was the overall reluctance to delve into the problem of pesticides except in so far as they induce immediate bee kills. Only two members of the 12-member task force (beekeeper Stephen Wilson and a Natural Resources Defense Council attorney) urged any limitations on the use of neonicotinoids.
Meetings without minutes or structure
A number of additional aspects of these meetings support the idea that the Task Force exists primarily for appearance’s sake. First, no one appeared to be taking official notes and no minutes were made available, despite advisor Stephen Wilson’s request for minutes at the second meeting. (Recordings are posted on NYSDAM’s website.) Second, no one wrote down ideas on a whiteboard or easel to capture them as they came up. Third, Task Force discussions were freewheeling, unstructured and all over the map.
The state’s short timeline also challenges the notion of a deliberative process informed by science. The whole process, from the first of three Task Force meetings to the submission of priority recommendations to the governor, is scheduled to take only three months (3).
Yet the meeting agendas presume that in an hour or two of meetings these advisors will contribute content to the pollinator plan, generate a meaningful research agenda, and cobble together BMPs to protect bees. For all this to happen fails to pass the laugh test.
Thus, in the final portion of the third meeting, Task Force advisors were asked to consider a series of BMPs listed on a handout prepared in advance (presumably by NYSDAM or DEC) but not distributed until the actual meeting. Task Force members had not gotten through the first item on the list when time ran out (4).
Perhaps there was no real need to carefully craft a plan because the conclusions appeared to have been pre-ordained. In his closing comments at the third meeting, DEC deputy commissioner Leff referred back to the governor’s blueprint for the state pollinator plan. In particular, Leff highlighted the BMPs designed to reduce pesticide exposure to managed pollinators through better communication among beekeepers and farmers. Leff stressed the need for landowners and pesticide applicators to know where hives are located and how to contact beekeepers before they spray. Beekeepers would have to be ready to move their hive, he said (5).
If his recommendations go into effect the onus of protecting bees from pesticides would fall on beekeepers. This is at odds with the historical assignment of such responsibility to pesticide applicators. In fact, pesticide labels carry legal weight in prohibiting pesticides considered acutely toxic to bees from being applied when flowers are in bloom or bees are present.
Leff’s proposal to shift responsibility is radical, but it is not new; the essential elements of Leff’s proposal are contained in the Guidance for State Pollinator Protection Plans, a June 2015 document produced by the State FIFRA Issues Research and Evaluation Group (6). (SFIREG is a committee of the Association of American Pesticide Control Officials. SFIREG used to have the document on its website, but has since removed it.) Among the six “critical elements” it identified for pollinator plans are methods for growers to know if managed pollinators are located near where pesticides are used and for contacting beekeepers prior to applying pesticides.
Thus it seems that pesticides are sometimes acknowledged to be causing at least part of the decline in pollinators, but the approach proposed by Leff and SFIREG ignores much of what is known–that systemic insecticides like neonicotinoids can harm bees months after application, for example via the planting of treated seeds (Lu et al., 2014), and that insecticides are not the only agrichemicals that harm bees. For example, a new study has found that exposure to low levels of glyphosate impairs honeybee navigation (Balbuena et al., 2015). And of course, warning beekeepers of impending pesticide applications does nothing to protect native pollinators, though ostensibly these plans are intended to protect them, too.
As the meeting was ending, I was able to pose a practical question. How easy is it for beekeepers to move their hives when they get a call that pesticides will be applied? Roberta Glatz, an older woman who serves on the state Apiary Industry Advisory Committee, replied from the audience.
She said that beekeepers aren’t necessarily where their bees are. “They may be in North Carolina raising queens.” She outlined other concerns as well. There are limited places where you can put your bees, and it takes a lot of negotiation to put in a bee yard. Logistics also come into play. Mud can impede access. Hives are heavy and usually have to be moved in the middle of the night when the bees are home. (And beekeepers often have day jobs, another beekeeper told me once the meeting ended.)
So while even the beekeepers of New York are having a hard time getting a fair shake in a protection plan for their own bees, in terms of pesticides it seems that Bombus affinis and other native bees should expect even less of one.
Footnotes
(1) Worldwide Integrated Assessment of the Impacts of Systemic Pesticides on Biodiversity and Ecosystems 2015 (IUCN’s Task Force on Systemic Pesticides)
(2) The Pollinator Stewardship Council is the best clearinghouse of state government pollinator protection activities around the country. Another resource is a May 2015 white paper from the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. It claims to provide links to the MP3s (“managed pollinator protection plans”) of North Dakota, California, Mississippi, Florida and Colorado, but of these states only North Dakota seems to have developed an actual plan.
(3) The timeline called for the state to circulate the NYS Pollinator Protection Action Plan Recommendations to task force members on October 19. In turn, they would have 7 days to comment. As of October 28, a beekeeper on the Task Force reported that he hadn’t received anything from the state yet.
(4) Discussion of specific BMPs was overshadowed by the contentious issue of whether beekeepers should be required to register all honeybee hives with the state and disclose their locations. BMPs listed on the handout pertained to such things as beekeepers’ care for their colonies and control of mites and other parasites/diseases, landowners and state agencies enhancing pollinator habitat and forage, the correct and judicious use of pesticides and of Integrated Pest Management, and the roles of beekeepers, landowners and pesticide applicators in protecting honeybees from pesticides.
(5) Some beekeepers fear that New York’s plan will follow North Dakota’s template, thus transferring the burden of protecting honeybee colonies from pesticides onto the beekeepers.
(6) FIFRA, which stands for the Federal Insecticide Fungicide Rodenticide Act, provides the nation’s regulatory framework for pesticides.
References
Balbuena, M. S., Tison, L., Hahn, M. L., Greggers, U., Menzel, R., & Farina, W. M. (2015). Effects of sub-lethal doses of glyphosate on honeybee navigation. The Journal of Experimental Biology, 10 July 2015. doi: 10.1242/ dev.117291
Lu C, Warchol KM, Callahan RA (2014) Sub-lethal exposure to neonicotinoids impaired honey bees winterization before proceeding to colony collapse disorder. Bull Insectol 67:125–130.
Lockheed Replaces Chief of Beleaguered F-35 Program
Sputnik – 31.10.2015
Lockheed Martin’s F-35 has been an undeniable embarrassment for the US military. Perhaps, at last, the company is starting to realize its faults, as it adjusts the program’s management team.
After spending nearly $400 billion on its development, the F-35 has seen its share of problems, despite being the most expensive piece of military hardware ever created. In addition to concerns that the jet’s software was vulnerable to cyberattack, the F-35’s fundamental performance capabilities have also been called into question.
“The jet fighter lacks the sensors weapons and speed that allow a warplane to reliably detect and shoot down other planes in combat,” a report from War is Boring reads. “At least not compared to modern Chinese- and Russian-made jets – the planes the F035 is most likely to face in battle in some future war.”
Defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin was behind the jet, with the program being led by Lorraine Martin.
But on Friday, the company announced a shakeup. Lorraine Martin is out, to be replaced by her deputy, Jeff Babione.
“He brings a deep understanding of the F-35 program, strong customer relationships and a collaborative leadership style that will ensure we continue the positive momentum of the program,” Orlando Carvalho, executive vice president of Lockheed Aeronautics, said in a statement.
While the company didn’t elaborate on the reason for the change in management, Lockheed has experienced a couple of major setbacks in recent weeks.
Almost immediately after winning office earlier this month, Canadian Prime Minister designate Justin Trudeau announced that his administration would pull out of the US-led coalition over Iraq and Syria. That means the new Liberal government will also be abandoning the F-35 program.
During his campaign, Trudeau said he would launch a new contracting competition to update the military’s aging fleet.
Earlier this week, Lockheed also lost a major defense contract to rival Northrop Grumman. A joint-team of Boeing and Lockheed Martin were competing against Northrop for the Pentagon’s contract to develop the next generation Long Range Strike-Bomber. Needed to replace the US Air Force’s fleet of B-1 and B-52s, the contract is estimated to be worth over $100 billion.
Prior to the Pentagon’s announcement, Lockheed-Boeing was expected to win.
While military officials refused to specify what went into their decision making process, it’s hard to imagine that the ballooning costs of the F-35 program didn’t play some role.
Martin will move to a newly created position of deputy executive vice president for Mission Systems and Training, through which she will oversee the company’s acquisition of Sikorsky helicopters.
‘Strategic depopulation’ of Syria likely cause of EU refugee crisis – Assange
RT | October 27, 2015
The flooding of Europe by countless waves of refugees may be the result of the “strategic depopulation” of Syria carried out by opponents of the country’s government, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has suggested.
Transparency organization WikiLeaks has looked through its diplomatic cables and unearthed “an interesting speculation about the refugee movement,” Assange said in an interview with Geek news site, ThePressProject.
“So, the speculation was this: Occasionally opponents of a country would engage in strategic depopulation, which is to decrease the fighting capacity of a government,” he explained.
The whistleblower pointed out that “it’s predominantly the middle class that is fleeing” Syria on account of having “language skills, money, some connections.” Engineers, managers and civil servants are “precisely, the classes that …[are] needed to keep the government functioning,” he said.
Syrian people are encouraged to flee their country “by Germany saying they’ll accept many-many refugees, and by Turkey taking nearly three million refugees, thus significantly weakening the Syrian government,” Assange stressed.
Syria isn’t the only case of migration being used as a weapon in recent history; during the Iraq War, Sweden told the US that “the acceptance of Iraqi refugees was part of its contribution,” according to cables.
The WikiLeaks founder said that it’s a “disgrace” that the US refuses to take in Syrian refuges because it’s Washington who should be held accountable for the hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Europe and making EU states close its borders with one other.
“The situation comes about as a result of the US, UK and French policy in the Middle East together with the behavior of US regional allies in the Middle East – Qatar, Turkey, Jordan and Israel… and Saudi Arabia,” he said.
The intercepted documents, already published by WikiLeaks, revealed that the US had been plotting to overthrow the Syrian government since around 2006, Assange stressed.
“It was trying to make the Syrian government ‘paranoid’ trying to get it to ‘overreact’ by instilling that fear and paranoia; trying to make it worried about coups; trying to stir up sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shias … trying to stop foreign investment in Syria and secretly funding a variety of NGOs in Syria also to make trouble, using the Saudis and Egypt to help push that along,” he said.
Meanwhile any of Assad’s attempts to battle terrorism and the expansion of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) strength were presented as a demonstration of weakness and “an example of [the] Syrian government not having full control over its territory to encourage the government overthrow,” the whistleblower added.
Assange stressed that the people in America have nothing to gain from the Syrian conflict, but “only particular factions that pushed for it” might believe that they will benefit in the end.
“Of course, the CIA perceives they have a benefit. They create a problem and then they’re given a greater budget to clean the problem up. Similarly, with the contractors, arms dealers and arms manufacturers. If there’s no problem then their budgets are cut. So they create problems,” Assange explained.
By meddling with Syria, Washington also pursued “a grand area strategy to weaken Hezbollah, to allow Israel greater control of Golan Heights, maybe a buffer zone as well; to knockout (Syria) a regional ally of Iran; to knockout the last Russian base that’s left outside the former Soviet Union in Tartus; to create a path for a gas pipe that is proposed pass is from Qatar to Saudi and up through Syria to Europe, which will compete with Russian gas,” added Assange.
US interference has led to Syria being ensnared in a bloody conflict since 2011. Over 220,000 people have been killed, according to UN estimates. Government forces have fought various militant groups throughout the conflict, including the so-called moderate opposition backed by the West as well as the jihadist IS and Jabhat al-Nusra terror groups.
In late September, Russia began airstrikes against the terrorists in Syria at the request of President Bashar Assad, allowing government forces to launch a large-scale offensive and recognize a turning point in the conflict.
Trident trap: Replacement of UK’s nuclear subs ‘to cost £167 billion, exceeding all expectations’
RT | October 25, 2015
The overall cost of replacing and maintaining Britain’s nuclear submarine fleet will reach 167 billion pounds ($256 billion), far exceeding initial expectations, Cameron’s Conservative party lawmakers told Reuters.
The final decision on replacing the UK’s four aging nuclear subs is due to be made in 2016, with Prime Minister David Cameron being a strong backer of continuing the country’s at-sea nuclear deterrent.
The British government had said earlier that the purchase of new Vanguard-class vessels, which are capable of carrying Trident missiles, would require around 15-20 billion pounds, without specifying estimated maintenance costs.
However, Minister of State for Defense Procurement Philip Dunne said on Friday that the price tag for the state-of-the-art submarines will come in at around 25 billion pounds.
The new figures were revealed in Dunne’s written parliamentary response to fellow Conservative party lawmaker Crispin Blunt’s request.
According to the response, the in-service costs would amount to about 6 percent of the annual defense budget, which now stands at around 34 billion pounds, over the vessels’ lifetime.
Blunt used the data provided by the Defense Ministry to calculate the total cost of the project, which he said will be “167 billion pounds.”
“My office’s calculation based on an in-service date of 2028 and a missile extension until 2060,” the MP told Reuters.
“The successor Trident program is going to consume more than double the proportion of the defense budget of its predecessor… The price required, both from the UK taxpayer and our conventional forces, is now too high to be rational or sensible,” Blunt stressed.
The lawmaker’s figure was based on the presumption that the UK will spend 2 percent of its annual GDP on defense, as Cameron has promised, and a forecast that the country’s GDP will grow 2.48 percent on average every year between 2020 and 2060.
Reuters said that they had repeated the calculations using the same numbers and conditions and also come to the same result – 167 billion pounds.
The Defense Ministry defended the rise in cost, saying that there was no alternative to the Trident-based nuclear deterrent in terms of both price and capability.
“At around 6 percent of the annual defense budget, the in-service costs of the UK’s national deterrent … are affordable and represent an investment in a capability which plays an important role in ensuring the UK’s national security,” the ministry stressed.
However, there is strong opposition to prolonging the Trident program in Britain, with critics suggesting that the money would better spent on families facing austerity.
The main Labour Party remains split on the issue, as its new leader, Jeremy Corbyn, doesn’t share the majority’s support for replacing the nuclear subs.
In late-September, Corbyn said he was “opposed to using nuclear weapons” and wouldn’t use the Trident system even if it was at his disposal.
The leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP), Nicola Sturgeon, has said that the renewal of Trident “is unjustified. It is unaffordable. It is immoral.”
READ MORE: ‘Get rid of Trident or back Tory WMD’: SNP calls on Scottish Labour ‘to be straight with people’
“Be in no doubt. The SNP will stand against Trident – today, tomorrow and always,” Sturgeon promised at the party’s conference earlier this month.
Last year, a poll by the Guardian newspaper revealed that 79 percent of British voters believe that UK shouldn’t renew its Trident program.
New nuclear: Finland’s cautionary tale for the UK
By Sophie Yeo | Carbon Brief | October 20, 2015
Finland has a 15-year-old problem called Olkiluoto 3. This nuclear plant was once the bright star of Finland’s energy future and Europe’s nuclear renaissance.
It was seen as a key component in Finland’s plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050 and end reliance on foreign imports of electricity, even during its long, dark Arctic winters. It is supposed to provide Finland with a low-carbon source of electricity for at least 60 years.
A 2006 article in the Telegraph spoke of the rebirth of Finnish love for nuclear power, describing the Olkiluoto site in phrases that could have been lifted from a pastoral poem: a “Baltic island of foraging swans”, “pine-scented” air and “unusually large salmon.”
But this source of hope has turned sour. Olkiluoto 3 — almost unpronounceable to non-Finns — is now nine years behind schedule and three times over budget.
It has been subject to lawsuits, technology failure, construction errors and miscommunication. A rift between the companies behind the plant has been described as “one of the biggest conflicts in the history of the construction sector”.
At best, it has been a turbulent lift-off to the lauded rebirth of nuclear power in western Europe. For the UK, which hopes to be a part of this renaissance, the story of Olkiluoto 3 offers a cautionary tale.
Background
The story of Olkiluoto 3 began in 2000, when Finnish utilities company TVO first applied to build a new nuclear power unit, in an attempt to wean the country off foreign imports of electricity and supply a new source of low-carbon energy.
In 2002, Finland’s parliament granted its permission, voting 107-92 in favour of the new unit. And in December 2003, Finland became the first country in Western Europe to order a new nuclear reactor in 15 years.
This was welcome news to nuclear supporters. Nuclear power stagnated in the 1990s, with accidents in Three Mile Island and Chernobyl in the ’70s and ’80s creating jitters about the risks of the industry, while the economic costs of building plants created nervousness among investors in newly liberalised energy markets. Olkiluoto 3 was seen as the sign that European nuclear was set for a revival.
With its new-and-improved Generation III+ technology, Olkiluoto 3 was meant to be safer and more efficient, as well as cheaper and faster to build than its predecessors — an ageing European fleet of Generation II plants built in the 1970s and 80s.
The 2014 World Nuclear Industry Status report points out that the former enthusiasm surrounding Generation III reactors has “dissolved”. Some proponents of nuclear power have argued that even these supposedly new-and-improved plants ought to be put aside for an even more modern round of Generation IV plants — technology that is still being developed, with China currently planning the world’s first in the province of Jiangxi.
It was decided that Olkiluoto Island in western Finland would host the new plant, where the Gulf of Bothnia could cool the steam used to turn the turbines and generate electricity. It would sit alongside two of Finland’s four existing nuclear plants (intuitively called Olkiluoto 1 and 2).
Olkiluoto 3 would use a new type of technology called a European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), which France has also since adopted for a new nuclear plant. China is building two EPRs, as well.
The plan was that Olkiluoto 3 should have a capacity of 1,600 megawatts. It would cost €3bn and come online in 2009.
Animation illustrating the operating principles of nuclear power plant units. Source: TVO.
Construction problems
It is now 2015, and Finland still does not have its new nuclear plant.
The companies behind the project are at loggerheads. TVO is seeking compensation from Areva in court, the company responsible for supplying the reactor and turbine, and Areva is pursuing a counterclaim.
Herkko Plit, the deputy director of Finland’s energy department, tells Carbon Brief:
“I don’t think there’s anybody who can say they are pleased with the project.”
Construction started in August 2005. The problems started early, with the incorrect laying of the concrete base slab — a structure that is supposed to be able to withstand the weight of the entire power plant collapsing on it.
This was accompanied by errors in the manufacture of the steel liner — the part of the unit that is responsible for preventing the release of radioactive materials into the environment, and is supposed to be able to withstand forces such as an aeroplane crash.
In 2006, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) conducted an investigation into the construction of the plant, following concerns about its safety culture.
The resulting report gives a variety of reasons for the problems encountered. Top of that hefty list comes problems with subcontractors responsible for carrying out much of the manufacturing work.
Many of the organisations chosen to work on the different parts of the plant did not have any experience in nuclear, and little understanding of the safety requirements.
One of the people interviewed for that report said that, “as safety culture is a concept usually associated with plants that are in operation, it has been difficult for them to understand what it could mean at the construction stage”.
While such issues had not compromised the safety of the plant, the report concluded that they were responsible for some of the first delays to the plant.
“The nervous system”
Later came problems with the instrumentation and control system, which is for monitoring and control. The International Atomic Energy Agency describes it as “the nervous system” of the plant.
This was finally approved in 2014, after four years of “exchanges” with TVO, as Areva put it. In August 2015, these cabinets were finally delivered to the site. Pasi Tuohimaa, TVO’s head of communications, tells Carbon Brief :
“Now we can see the trail towards the end. This autumn, we will have all this automation installed, and next year we apply to have it opened, and then we start testing it and loading the fuel.”
The good news precipitated a rare moment of harmony in the bitter feud between Areva and TVO. The rivals held their first joint press conference to mark the occasion. “It’s such a big milestone for both of us,” TVO’s Tuohimaa adds.
Who will suffer?
TVO signed a contract with Areva for the plant — a one-off payment of €3.2bn, covering the EPR and other costs. Such contracts are rare in nuclear power plants, due to the construction risks associated with the technology.
At the time, it was seen as an expression of confidence in the industry. For Areva, the opportunity to build an EPR in Finland offered a chance to show that nuclear could survive and become competitive in the liberalised Scandinavian energy market — a boost for the company, which has not managed to sell a reactor since 2007.
The turnkey contract meant spiralling costs of the Olkiluoto 3 plant have fallen at Areva’s door. This has been the subject of a bitter dispute between TVO and Areva.
Areva maintains that TVO’s “inappropriate behaviour” has been responsible for the delays, and that the utility company should, therefore, be liable for the multi-billion euro cost overruns. Meanwhile, TVO says Areva is responsible for failing to build the plant according to schedule. It has called the delays “hard to accept.”
The compensation claims, as well as the costs of the plant itself, keep spiralling upwards. In August 2015, TVO raised its claim against Areva to €2.6bn from its previous €2.3bn, and €1.8bn before that. In October 2014, Areva raised its own claim against TVO to €3.5bn from €2.6bn. The case is being dealt with in the International Chamber of Commerce‘s arbitration court.
Nonetheless, Areva has been forced to accept losses. The company, which hasn’t turned a profit since 2010, recorded net losses of €4.8bn in 2014, largely due to Olkiluoto. It has agreed to sell a majority stake in its nuclear reactor business to EDF.
If the lawsuit turns against TVO, it could be Finland’s industry that feels the pain. The utilities company is owned by shareholders that buy the right to use the electricity produced by the power station.
Its majority shareholder, for instance, is Pohjolan Voima Oy — a Finnish energy company that provides power to its shareholders, including two pulp and paper manufacturers, which pay for the production cost of the electricity.
Such industries could buckle under the inflated costs of electricity, which could end up more expensive than the electricity bought from the joint Nordic “pool”, says Stephen Thomas, professor of energy policy at the University of Greenwich. He tells Carbon Brief :
“It’s a big problem, because if you put up the price for householders, they will squeal and complain, but they’ll probably pay. If you’re an aluminium smelter and 60% of your costs is buying electricity, if that electricity is 50% too expensive, you’re out of business.”
Future of Finnish nuclear
Despite the trials and tribulations of Olkiluoto 3, Finland does not seem to have been swerved from its nuclear path.
Another nuclear power plant is planned for the north of Finland. Hanhikivi 1 will be the first nuclear power plant from another power consortium Fennovoima, and is due to come online in 2024.
The project is already facing controversy. Its reliance on Russian investment at a time when other countries have sought to isolate Moscow due to its invasion of Ukraine has raised eyebrows, while a Croatian investor was rejected by the government in Helsinki following suspicions that it was also being controlled from within Russia.
Construction work has also begun on a megaproject to store nuclear waste. Onkalo, which translates as “cavity”, is an underground tunnel built 520m into the Finnish bedrock. A project of Posiva, a company jointly owned by TVO and Fortum, it is located at the site of Olkiluoto.
Onkalo is designed to protect nuclear waste for 100,000 years. The timespan, almost impossible to conceptualise, caught the imagination of Danish director Michael Madsen, who made a documentary about the project, and the difficulty of communicating danger millennia down the line.
The possibility of a fourth reactor at the Olkiluoto site proved to be one too many, however. For now, TVO has given up on plans on Olkiluoto 4.
Plit, from Finland’s energy department, remains cheerful in the face of 15 years of difficulties and delays. He tells Carbon Brief:
“One has to remember that Olkiluoto 3 was the first western unit to be constructed in the nuclear sector for 20 years. Unfortunately, this know-how that used to exist in the 80s was no longer there, and you had to create everything from scratch, more or less. That has taken time.”
Prof Thomas at University of Greenwich is not so sure that the loss of knowledge since the last burst of nuclear construction can be entirely blamed. He points out that none of the four EPRs under construction have gone to plan so far, so to say that Olkiluoto is suffering only because of its novelty is oversimplistic. He tells Carbon Brief:
“Areva was so confident that they gave a fixed price, so they weren’t expecting first-of-a-kind problems.”
A cautionary tale
Some are already seeing Finland’s troubled relationship with new nuclear as a cautionary tale for the current UK government, which hopes to oversee its own nuclear renaissance.
The energy company EDF plans to build two new reactors at Hinkley Point. These will be the same design as Olkiluoto 3 — Areva’s EPR. The project will cost £24.5bn, and has already been subject to numerous delays.
The government has shown itself to be a devoted fan of the project, most recently offering a £2bn guarantee to smooth along the path to construction.
Despite this, it has been difficult to secure investors, who continue to be spooked by the ghosts of Flamanville in France and Olkiluoto, admitted the chief executive of EDF recently. Jean-Bernard Levy told French Financial daily Les Echos that, for those who have witnessed the spiralling costs and delays to date, it is “difficult to commit”.
The UK government hopes to confirm Chinese funding during a state visit by President Xi Jinping this week, which would prove instrumental in making the project happen.
EDF has insisted that it has learnt from the past, but Prof Thomas at the University of Greenwich is not so sure. The EPR is a “lousy design” that has not only tripped up the Finns, but also the French and Chinese. He tells Carbon Brief:
“If you look at the problems of Olkiluoto and Flamanville, they have been basic site work quality issues… It’s not as if there was a simple fault you could identify and make sure you didn’t do the same again. It’s not like they made a mess with this particular operation and this caused all the problems. There have been hundreds of different issues.
“That’s what’s most striking at the experience of Olkiluoto — just how many different things have gone wrong.”
Portugal’s President Won’t Allow Leftists to Form a Government
teleSUR – October 23, 2015
Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva said he will not allow a coalition of leftist parties to form a government despite the fact that they won an outright majority in parliamentary elections held earlier this month.
The president said Thursday that he gave conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho the mandate to form a minority government that will fall in line with the policy of austerity imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“In 40 years of democracy, no government in Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces, that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty, the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in addition to wanting the dissolution of NATO,” said President Cavaco Silva.
He argued that it was too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come close to power, saying the country’s right wing would protect austerity measures the left had threatened to overturn.
The decision outraged Left Bloc leader Antonio Costa, who called the president’s action a “grave mistake” that threatened the country’s stability. “It is unacceptable to usurp the exclusive powers of parliament,” he said. “The Socialists will not take lessons from professor Cavaco Silva on the defense of our democracy.”
Parties in the Left Bloc ran an anti-austerity campaign than won them more than 50 percent of the vote in the Oct. 4 elections. Coelho’s coalition won only 38 percent of the vote, not enough to form a single-party government. That prompted the leftist parties to form a coalition, allowing it to gain an outright majority that would, in theory, permit it to form a government.
Cavaco Silva said it was now up to lawmakers in parliament to decide on the new government’s program, which must be presented in 10 days. If it is rejected in parliament, the government will collapse. The three-party leftist coalition vowed to reject the program as they, after all, control the legislative body, holding 122 seats out of 230.
“I give this government a week or a week and a half,” said Left Bloc lawmaker Filipe Soares. “The president will have to take the responsibility for the instability that will be created by this decision.”
Critics portrayed the president’s move as an assault on democracy.
“Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and membership,” wrote Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor of The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper.
Portugal returned to democracy in 1974 after nearly 50 years of authoritarianism.
Brookings Wants to Strengthen the Syrian Rebels by Bombing Hezbollah
By Steven MacMillan – New Eastern Outlook – 24.10.2015
Western think tanks have been working relentlessly to try and counter Russia’s geopolitical masterstroke in Syria, which has clearly taken most strategists in the West by complete surprise. Reading through the analysis by these think tanks on Russia’s role in Syria, one is starkly reminded of how immoral Western foreign policy actually is, when you remember that these organisations are freaking out because Russia is bombing terrorists! Obviously, the reason why they are so distraught is because Russia is bombing the West’s terrorists, which they have been using as proxy armies to try and force regime change in Damascus (a strategy that has completely failed).
Potential countermeasures are the subject of a recent article for the Brookings Institution written by Pavel K. Baev, a nonresident senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, titled: Russia’s Syrian entanglement: Can the West sit back and watch? Baev suggests that “the decision to withdraw the batteries of Patriot surface-to-air missiles [from Turkey] must be cancelled”,before arguing that the US and its allies could bomb “Hezbollah bands around Damascus”:
“Finally, the United States and its allies could deliver a series of airstrikes on the Hezbollah bands around Damascus. That would be less confrontational vis-à-vis Russia than hitting Assad’s forces. Hezbollah has already suffered losses in the Syrian war and is not particularly motivated to stand with Assad to the bitter end, away from [its] own home-ground in Lebanon. (Israel would appreciate such punishment, too.)”
Striking Hezbollah may not have the desired effect Baev seems to envisage however, as this belligerent action is as likely to galvanize the group and ensure it will fight “to the bitter end” with the Syrian army, than encourage it to scale back its involvement in Syria. Airstrikes on Hezbollah could also potentially provoke a response against the perpetrators of the violence, further escalating a conflict that already involves a plethora of regional and international powers. Furthermore, many people would consider an attack on Hezbollah to be essentially an attack on Iran, as the Lebanese based group is funded by Tehran and closely aligned with the country.
Brookings recommendations once again highlight the fact that large sections of the US establishment have absolutely no focus on defeating ISIS in the region, as Brookings is advocating bombing a major group that has been fighting ISIS for years now. Rather, many within the US are still focused on toppling the regime in Damascus (which is never going to happen) in addition to weakening the forces that are battling ISIS. If the West was serious about defeating ISIS, they would support and cooperate with the forces that are truly fighting against this new so-called caliphate.
TTIP is an Geoeconomic Tool against Russia
Western strategists are terrified of Europe moving closer to the East, and an EU-Russian (especially a German-Russian) alliance arising. Merging Russia and the EU in the future is an objective of some US strategists, but Washington only desires this if both Russia and the EU are completely subservient to US dictates. Today however, Russia is a sovereign, independent nation which is not controlled by the US, and some within the EU are increasingly tiring of being vassals of Washington. This means closer relations between Russia and the EU is a geopolitical disaster for the US at the present moment, as Washington’s power will be severely diminished if this tectonic shift occurs.
By understanding this reality, it is now obvious how essential the trade deal between the US and the EU – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – is to US geostrategy. As well as being a corporate fascist deal that empowers multi-national corporations at the expense of citizens, TTIP is a geoeconomic weapon against Russia to cement the transatlantic alliance between the US and the EU.
Ensuring TTIP passes was a recommendation of another Western organisation that has been working on potential counter strategies to Russia, namely the Washington-based Atlantic Council (AC). In a testimony before the US Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on October 8, 2015, Gen James L. Jones, Jr., the Chairman of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and a former National Security Advisor, Jones emphasises the importance of TTIP “successfully concluding” for the West:
“Energy security is instrumental for transatlantic growth, prosperity, and security. The same can be said of successfully concluding TTIP. Europe and the US have the largest trading partnership in the world. Strengthening it serves our mutual interests and reaffirms the centrality of the transatlantic alliance in the 21st century. TTIP also affords the U.S. a unique opportunity to author the rulebook and roadmap for 21st century advanced economies.”
Jones other recommendations include working to diversify the EU’s energy supply to “undermine Putin’s use of energy as a political weapon”, continuing to impose sanctions on Moscow, in addition to admitting Montenegro into NATO next year and working to pull Macedonia into the military alliance. The retired General also asserts that the US should provide the government in Kiev with “anti-tank missiles, intelligence support, training and counter-electronic warfare capabilities”.
Russia of course is well aware of the importance of TTIP to Washington’s long-term agenda. In Vladimir Putin’s speech at the United Nations at the end of September, Putin appeared to confront some of the US-led trade deals which we have seen being negotiated in recent years, most probably referring to TTIP and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (from 18.45 into the speech):
“I would like to point out another sign of a growing economic selfishness. Some countries have chosen to create closed and exclusion economic associations, with the establishment being negotiated behind the scenes in secret from those countries own citizens, the general public [and] the business community. Other states whose interests may be effected are not informed of anything either. It seems we are about to be faced with an accomplished fact that the rules of the game have been changed in favour of a narrow group of the privileged, with the WTO having no say. This could imbalance the trade system completely and disintegrate the global economic space. These issues affect the interests of all states and influence the future of the world economy as a whole.”
For a multitude of reasons, defeating TTIP would be a colossal achievement for the world. Many European’s are diametrically opposed to this deal, with hundreds of thousands protesting TTIP in Germany a recent illustration of this sentiment. Stop TTIP!
Ecuador Using Oil Revenue to Build 400 New Schools by 2017
President Rafael Correa high-fives a boy during his tour of a new school built in the province of Azuay, Ecuador, Oct. 20, 2015. | Photo: Ecuadorean Presidency
teleSUR – October 22, 2015
Ecuador announced Wednesday that the government intends to build 400 new schools by 2017.
Half of the schools will be the state of the art “Millennium Educational Units” that include scientific laboratories, a library, a multi-purpose auditorium, an administrative wing and ample classrooms. The rest will be prefabricated units that can be constructed much faster and will be built in areas with the most urgent need for new schools.
“There is no better way to achieve true freedom than quality education,” President Rafael Correa said Tuesday during a ceremony to inaugurate a new school in the province of Azuay.
The new Millennium Educational Unit opened in Azuay replaces 13 much smaller schools that were sorely lacking in supplies and space needed to provide a quality education.
According to the Andes news agency, the funding for this particular school came from royalties from a nearby mining project. The stated objective of the Correa government is to take the income generated from extraction projects and invest it into strategic sectors such as education in order to move the country away from its dependence on non-renewable resources.
Ecuadorean law also stipulates that a portion of the income generated by extraction projects be reinvested into the region where the project is located.
Correa says his government had invested at least US$20 billion in education over the past eight years of his administration. The Ministry of Education provides free school supplies, books, uniforms, and meals in order to reduce barriers for low-income students, with a goal of achieving a 100 percent attendance rate.
The political opposition and right-wing press have criticized the Correa government over its spending. During the inauguration ceremony Correa replied saying, “Ecuador does not spend a lot, it invests a lot, which is different.”
The country has already built 57 of the Millennium Educational Units, with a further 48 under construction. The schools are intended to have a lifespan of 100 years. The prefabricated schools have a shorter lifespan at 25 years but take only 11 weeks to build.
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From the Archives
The Forgotten Terrorist Pretext of the Vietnam War
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | February 16, 2023
Since 9/11, terrorism has become the ultimate entitlement program for America’s political elite. Whether it is illegally spying on Americans or blowing Somali dissidents to pieces, invoking terrorism provides all the cover needed for Washington policymakers. But the disastrous results of granting politicians a blank check to fight terrorism should have been undeniable almost 60 years ago.
Back in the 1960s, terrorism was what the communists did. Anti-terrorist moral fervor and ideological blinders propelled the U.S. into its biggest foreign policy blunder since World War II. … continue
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