Antarctic Sea Ice Growing Despite Global Warming

I know, I know, the earth is heating up, the polar ice caps are disappearing, the seas are rising, Miami & New Yawk are gonna be under water in half a century or so, but wait! Here's a new report out that says the sea ice coverage around Antarctica over the weekend just marked a record high, with the ice surrounding the continent measuring at 2.07 million square kilometers, according to an environmentalist and author who says the ice there has actually been increasing since 1979 despite continued warnings of global warming.

The new record was posted for the first time by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s online record, The Cryosphere Today, early Sunday morning. It's not apparent if the record actually occurred on Friday or Saturday, says Harold Ambler on his blog, Talking About the Weather. Ambler is a journalist and author of the book "Don't Sell Your Coat: Surprising Truths About Climate Change." 

"The previous record anomaly for Southern Hemisphere sea ice area was 1.840 million square kilometers and occurred on December 20, 2007," said Ambler. Meanwhile, he pointed out, global sea ice area on Sunday was standing at 0.991 million square kilometers above average, a figure he arrived at by adding anomalies for the North and South hemispheres.

While early models predicted the sea ice would decrease because of global warming, other models are showing that the opposite is happening around Antarctica, where sea ice growth is increasing. "A freshening of the waters surrounding the southernmost continent as well as the strengthening of the winds circling it were both theorized as explanations for the steady growth of Antarctica’s sea ice during the period of satellite measurement," said Ambler. 

However, he pointed out that climatologists have discounted the importance and growth of the Antarctic sea ice. According to Walt Meier, formerly of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and currently of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, most of the Antarctic sea ice does not survive between years, and it's less significant to the Earth's climate than is the ice around the Arctic.

Meanwhile, Ambler said that the growth of the Antarctic sea ice is providing "a public relations problem, at a minimum, for those warning of global warming’s menace." During the past 18 months, global sea ice "has seen its most robust 18-month period of the last 13 years, maintaining, on average, a positive anomaly for an 18-month period for the first time since 2001," he wrote. In addition, Ambler said, the South Pole's temperature has been dropping over the past 40 years.

Confused yet? Yeah, me too.

Protesters Launch Blimp Above New NSA Center

The NSA has this new facility out in Utah that cost you, the taxpayer, ONE AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS. Ouch! What they are supposed to do with it, I don't know, since most of their mass surveillance programs are under question after a Mr. E. Snowden (now in Russia) started talking about their escapades. Anyway, the place is pretty big, around a million-square-feet. That's about six times the size of a Wal-Mart Superstore (179,000 sq. ft.). 

Well, nobody is going shopping at NSA, but the place has attracted something else, a massive 135-foot Greenpeace blimp that's now hovering about 1,000 feet directly over the center, with a big arrow and the words NSA ILLEGAL SPYING BELOW printed on its side for everybody to see for miles and miles.

I know you're laughing to tears right now so this is where you can have a short moment of silence ....

Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the gigantic thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency’s mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform.

“We thought it would be fun to fly an airship around the Utah data center, which in many ways epitomizes the NSA’s collect-it-all strategy,” says Rainey Reitman, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We wanted to have a way to symbolize that our movement is getting quite confrontational with NSA surveillance in a visceral way.”

The protesters launched the blimp, which is named the AE Bates after a longtime Greenpeace volunteer, at 6 a.m. to capitalize on calm weather.

The stunt was timed, Reitman says, to approximately a year after the political debate on NSA spying began. “Many members of congress have acted as roadblocks or sat on the sidelines of this debate,” she says. “The time had come for us to be very honest with the general public about those who have and haven’t called for NSA reform.”

Greenpeace became involved in the project as a plaintiff in a lawsuit the EFF filed against the NSA last year, which accused the agency of intimidating activists with its mass phone metadata collection programs. Their blimp has made earlier appearances to protest coal-fired power plants in North Carolina, overfishing in the pacific northwest, and the Koch brothers in Southern California. Reitman says they can rest assured the blimp isn't a menacing new surveillance technique. “The only people we’re surveilling with this airship is the NSA.”

By the way, in case you're interested, the Stand Against Spying URL is https://standagainstspying.org/

The Drones are Coming!

They're coming, they're coming! Yes, whether we like it or not, the drones are coming. Possibly to our back yard, or onto the roof, through a window, or who knows where? According to the Washington Post, more than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic.

Now, commercial drone flights are set to become a widespread reality in the United States, starting next year, under a 2012 law passed by Congress. Drone flights by law enforcement agencies and the military, which already occur on a limited basis, are projected to surge too.

Military drones have slammed into homes, farms, runways, highways, waterways and, in one case, an Air Force C-130 Hercules transport plane in midair. No one has died in a drone accident, but this is just the beginning. “All I saw were tents, and I was afraid that I had killed someone,” Air Force Maj. Richard Wageman told investigators after an accident in November 2008, when he lost control of a Predator that plowed into a U.S. base in Afghanistan. “I felt numb, and I am certain that a few cuss words came out of my mouth.”

Pent-up demand to buy and fly remotely controlled aircraft in the States is enormous. Law enforcement agencies, which already own a small number of camera-equipped drones, are projected to purchase thousands more; police departments covet them as an inexpensive tool to provide bird’s-eye surveillance for up to 24 hours straight.

Businesses see profitable possibilities for drones, to tend crops, move cargo, inspect real estate or film Hollywood movies. Journalists have applied for drone licenses to cover the news. Amazon.com chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos wants his company to use autonomous drones to deliver small packages to customers’ doorsteps. 

Public opposition has centered on civil-liberties concerns, such as the morality and legality of using drones to spy on people in their back yards. There has been scant scrutiny of the safety record of remotely controlled aircraft. A report released June 5 by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that there were “serious unanswered questions” about how to safely integrate civilian drones into the national airspace, calling it a “critical, cross cutting challenge.”

Serious, unanswered questions indeed. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Chinese Now Invading the U.S. with Jobs

My how times have changed. It hasn't been very long since everybody was griping about American jobs being taken away by them foreigners, remember? Well guess what? Jobs are coming back. And where from? Of all places, China! Yup.

Take for example Wilcox County, Alabama. They have the state's highest unemployment rate, lots of long abandoned textile mills and furniture plants. In short, Wilcox County desperately needs jobs. And now they're coming, and from a most unlikely place: Henan Province, China, 7,600 miles away. Henan's Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group opened a plant in the town just last month. It will employ more than 300 in a county known less for job opportunities than for lakes filled with bass, pine forests rich with wild turkey and boar and muddy roads best negotiated in four-wheel-drive trucks. "Jobs that pay $15 an hour are few and far between," says Dottie Gaston, an official in nearby Thomasville.

And what's happening in Pine Hill is starting to happen across America. After decades of siphoning jobs from the United States, China is creating some. Chinese companies invested a record $14 billion in the United States last year, according to the Rhodium Group research firm. Collectively, they employ more than 70,000 Americans, up from virtually none a decade ago.

Powerful forces — narrowing wage gaps, tumbling U.S. energy prices, the vagaries of currency markets — are pulling Chinese companies across the Pacific. Mayors and economic development officials have lined up to welcome Chinese investors. Southern states, touting low labor and land costs, have been especially aggressive. "Get off the plane and the mayor is waiting for you," says Hong Kong billionaire Ronnie Chan.

Among other Chinese projects in the United States that are creating jobs: In Moraine, Ohio, Chinese glassmaker Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. is taking over a plant that General Motors abandoned in 2008 and creating at least 800 jobs. The site puts Fuyao within four hours' drive of auto plants in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. In Lancaster County, South Carolina, Chinese textile manufacturer Keer Group is investing $218 million in a plant to make industrial yarn and will employ 500. South Carolina nudged the deal along with a $4 million grant. In Gregory, Texas, Tianjin Pipe is investing over $1 billion in a factory that makes pipes for oil and gas drillers. The company expects to begin production late this year or early in 2015. It will have 50 to 70 employees by the end of this year and 400 to 500 by the end of 2017.

The United States and China have long maintained a lop-sided relationship: China makes things. America buys them. The U.S. trade deficit in goods with China last year hit a record $318 billion. And for three decades, numerous U.S. manufacturers have moved operations to China.

The flow is at least starting to move the other way. One reason is that in the past decade, the cost of labor, adjusted for productivity gains, has surged 187 percent at Chinese factories, compared with just 27 percent in the United States, according to Boston Consulting Group. Those rising costs have cut China's competitive edge. In 2004, manufacturing cost 14 percent less in China than in the United States; that advantage has narrowed to 5 percent. If the trend toward higher wages, energy costs and a higher currency continues, Boston Consulting predicts, U.S. manufacturing will be less expensive than China's by 2018.

Alabama and other Southern states have followed the example of South Carolina, which nabbed the first Chinese plant in America 14 years ago when appliance giant Haier built a refrigerator plant in Camden. John Ling, who runs South Carolina's Shanghai office, has an empty factory he's pitching to Chinese firms. It's been shuttered for four years — since the former owners closed it and moved the jobs to China. "We will see more and more Chinese projects coming," Ling says. "It's at the very beginning."

Protesters Launch Blimp Above New NSA Center

The NSA has this new facility out in Utah that cost you, the taxpayer, ONE AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS. Ouch! What they are supposed to do with it, I don't know, since most of their mass surveillance programs are under question after Mr. E. Snowden (now in Russia) started talking about their escapades. Anyway, the place is pretty big, around a million-square-feet. That's about six times the size of a Wal-Mart Superstore (179,000 sq. ft.). Well, nobody is going shopping at NSA, but the place has attracted something else, a massive 135-foot blimp that's now hovering about 1,000 feet directly over the center, with the letters NSA printed on its side.

I know you're laughing to tears right now so this is where you can have a short moment of silence ....

Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the gigantic thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency’s mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform. The full message on the blimp reads “NSA: Illegal Spying Below” along with an arrow pointing downward and the Stand Against Spying URL.

“We thought it would be fun to fly an airship around the Utah data center, which in many ways epitomizes the NSA’s collect-it-all strategy,” says Rainey Reitman, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We wanted to have a way to symbolize that our movement is getting quite confrontational with NSA surveillance in a visceral way.”

The protesters launched the blimp, which is owned by Greenpeace and named the AE Bates after a longtime Greenpeace volunteer, at 6 a.m. to capitalize on calm weather.

The stunt was timed, Reitman says, to approximately a year after the political debate on NSA spying began. “Many members of congress have acted as roadblocks or sat on the sidelines of this debate,” she says. “The time had come for us to be very honest with the general public about those who have and haven’t called for NSA reform.”

Greenpeace became involved in the project as a plaintiff in a lawsuit the EFF filed against the NSA last year, which accused the agency of intimidating activists with its mass phone metadata collection programs. Their blimp has made earlier appearances to protest coal-fired power plants in North Carolina, overfishing in the pacific northwest, and the Koch brothers in Southern California.

Reitman says they can rest assured the blimp isn't a menacing new surveillance technique. “The only people we’re surveilling with this airship is the NSA.” Let's give 'em a hearty Ha Ha Ha!

Russian Police Short Skirts Banned

Ah, man, this is terrible. Just when things started getting interesting, the Moscow Times reports that the Russian Interior Ministry has launched a crackdown on modifications to uniforms after concerns over female officers shortening their skirts. Russian authorities decided to ban short skirts and other uniform modifications, amid concerns over rising police hemlines. The new rules, which also prohibit officers from wearing wrinkled items, and combining their uniforms with civilian clothing, follow a decree from Sergei Gerasimov, the deputy interior minister.

According to the Izvestia newspaper, Gerasimov said: "When you meet people, the first thing you see is their clothing, and for a police officer fulfilling his duties, it is crucial to have a tidy and neat appearance. From time to time, we have seen instances of officers improperly wearing their uniforms. … Heads [of departments] must pay more attention to the appearance of their subordinates."

The striking image above purporting to show radical uniform modifications in the town of Yekaterinburg appeared on Twitter, but was met with claims it was fake as they appeared to show officers in high heels. (Who cares, I used it anyway!)

Mikhail Pashkin, chairman of the coordination council of the police officers' union, told the Moscow Times that he saw no reason to complain over the shortening of skirts. "Perhaps the girls want to get married, " he said.

EPA Employees: No Pooping In The Hallway!

Yes, your government is certainly a pride to behold. It seems federal employees at the EPA in Denver have been instructed to stop defecating in the hallways. Huh? I'm sure Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor was thrilled to tears to send an email out to employees describing the "several" inappropriate bathroom "incidents" that had taken place in the building, including a description of "an individual placing feces in the hallway" outside the restroom. 

"Management is taking this situation very seriously and will take whatever actions are necessary to identify and prosecute these individuals," Cantor wrote in his email, asking any employee with knowledge of the individual's identity to notify management.

Of course, this is a government agency, right? So, instead of leaving the matter to an email and moving on, EPA management had to consult with a workplace violence specialist, John Nicoletti, who called the behavior "very dangerous" and (horrors!) warned that the perpetrators would "probably escalate" their behavior, according to GovExec. God knows how many committees and sub-committees they probably formed just to study the problem.

EPA spokesman Richard Mylott added that Nicoletti’s expertise was sought in an effort to maintain a "safe workplace" in a statement to GovExec Wednesday. "EPA cannot comment on ongoing personnel matters. EPA's actions in response to recent workplace issues have been deliberate and have focused on ensuring a safe work environment for our employees," Mylott said. "Our brief consultation with Dr. Nicoletti on this matter, a resource who regularly provides our office with training and expertise on workplace issues, reflects our commitment to securing a safe workplace."

The EPA has been plagued with a range of cases involving employee misconduct over the last several months, including one ethics violation involving a political appointee accepting travel gifts from lobbyists. Another investigation revealed an employee receiving pay despite having moved to a retirement home, where the employee was allegedly not employed, one or two years earlier.

In May, another EPA employee was investigated for downloading 7,000 porn files on his work computer and viewing them two to six hours a day. The same month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee accused the EPA of sustaining a system riddled with high-ranking fraud and "criminal conduct,” costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

As of March, EPA’s Office of Inspector General was investigating 78 open integrity cases -- five involving political appointees –- according to the OIG’s employee misconduct report released twice a year. "This is truly a broken agency," committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said in May.