Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, put the matter this way recently: “[N]ext to Antarctica, Afghanistan is probably the most incommodious place, from a logistics point of view, to be trying to fight a war… It’s landlocked and rugged, and the road network is much, much thinner than in Iraq. Fewer airports, different geography.”  In other words, we might as well be fighting on the moon.  In translation, this means at least one thing: don’t believe any of the figures coming out of the White House or the Pentagon about what this war is going to cost.

As Jo Comerford, executive director of the National Priorities Project points out below, the president’s $30 billion figure for getting those 30,000-plus new surge troops into Afghanistan is going to prove a “through-the-basement estimate.”  As for the dates for getting them in and beginning to get them out?  Well, it’s grain-of-salt time there, too.  According to Steven Mufson and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, some of the fuel storage facilities being built to support the surge troops won’t even be completed by the time the first of them are scheduled to leave the country, 18 months from now.

And keep in mind the endless, and endlessly vulnerable, supply lines on which so much of that fuel — and almost everything else the U.S. military has to have to survive — travels.  Along those mountainous roads, trucks are “lost,” or Taliban-commandeered, or bribes are paid for passage, or some are simply destroyed in what can only be thought of as an underreported supply-line war.  All of this adds immeasurably to the staggering expense of the project.  According to August Cole of the Wall Street Journal, in fuel terms alone, to support a single soldier in Afghanistan costs between $200,000 and $350,000 a year.

And while we’re at it: don’t expect all those surging troops to make it into Afghanistan any time soon.  In the heroic tales of presidential surge deliberations (based on copious White House leaks) that appeared soon after the president’s West Point speech, much was made of how Obama himself had insisted on speeding up the plan to get the extra troops in place.  All would arrive, the White House said, within six months.  That was quickly changed to approximately eight months.  Now, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, deputy commander of American and NATO forces there, has just announced that it will take nine to eleven months (or maybe even “up to a year”), and that’s if none of the factors that could go wrong do — something not worth putting your money on when it comes to the Afghan War.

If all this leaves you with lingering worries about the success of both the surge and the war, you can put them to rest, however.  NBC’s Richard Engel found a “military schematic,” a single chart from the office of the Joint Chiefs, that offers a visual representation of the military’s full surge/counterinsurgency strategy.  It has to be seen to be believed.  (Just click here.)

It lays out as a flow chart (or perhaps overflow chart would be the more accurate description) just how our war will achieve success.  What could possibly go wrong with such a plan?  It’s hard to imagine.  In the meantime, let Comerford give you a little lesson in the economics of the Afghan War, and what we could have done with that low-ball figure of $30 billion, had we chosen not to fight a war on the moon. Tom

MORE

$57,077.60
Surging by the Minute
By Jo Comerford

$57,077.60. That’s what we’re paying per minute. Keep that in mind — just for a minute or so.

After all, the surge is already on. By the end of December, the first 1,500 U.S. troops will have landed in Afghanistan, a nation roughly the size of Texas, ranked by the United Nations as second worst in the world in terms of human development.

Women and men from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, will be among the first to head out. It takes an estimated $1 million to send each of them surging into Afghanistan for one year. So a 30,000-person surge will be at least $30 billion, which brings us to that $57,077.60.  That’s how much it will cost you, the taxpayer, for one minute of that surge.

By the way, add up the yearly salary of a Marine from Camp Lejeune with four years of service, throw in his or her housing allowance, additional pay for dependents, and bonus pay for hazardous duty, imminent danger, and family separation, and you’ll still be many thousands of dollars short of that single minute’s sum.

But perhaps this isn’t a time to quibble. After all, a job is a job, especially in the United States, which has lost seven million jobs since December 2007, while reporting record-high numbers of people seeking assistance to feed themselves and/or their families. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 36 million Americans, including one out of every four children, are currently on food stamps.

On the other hand, given the woeful inadequacy of that “safety net,” we might have chosen to direct the $30 billion in surge expenditures toward raising the average individual monthly Food Stamp allotment by $70 for the next year; that’s roughly an additional trip to the grocery store, every month, for 36 million people. Alternatively, we could have dedicated that $30 billion to job creation. According to a recent report issued by the Political Economy Research Institute, that sum could generate a whopping 537,810 construction jobs, 541,080 positions in healthcare, fund 742,740 teachers or employ 831,390 mass transit workers.

For purposes of comparison, $30 billion — remember, just the Pentagon-estimated cost of a 30,000-person troop surge — is equal to 80% of the total U.S. 2010 budget for international affairs, which includes monies for development and humanitarian assistance. On the domestic front, $30 billion could double the funding (at 2010 levels) for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

Or think of the surge this way: if the United States decided to send just 29,900 extra soldiers to Afghanistan, 100 short of the present official total, it could double the amount of money — $100 million — it has allocated to assist refugees and returnees from Afghanistan through the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration.

Leaving aside the fact that the United States already accounts for 45% of total global military spending, the $30 billion surge cost alone would place us in the top-ten for global military spending, sandwiched between Italy and Saudi Arabia. Spent instead on “soft security” measures within Afghanistan, $30 billion could easily build, furnish and equip enough schools for the entire nation.

Continuing this nod to the absurd for just one more moment, if you received a silver dollar every second, it would take you 960 years to haul in that $30 billion. Not that anyone could hold so much money. Together, the coins would weigh nearly 120,000 tons, or more than the poundage of 21,000 Asian elephants, an aircraft carrier, or the Washington Monument. Converted to dollar bills and laid end-to-end, $30 billion would reach 2.9 million miles or 120 times around the Earth.

One more thing, that $30 billion isn’t even the real cost of Obama’s surge. It’s just a minimum, through-the-basement estimate. If you were to throw in all the bases being built, private contractors hired, extra civilians sent in, and the staggering costs of training a larger Afghan army and police force (a key goal of the surge), the figure would surely be startlingly higher. In fact, total Afghanistan War spending for 2010 is now expected to exceed $102.9 billion, doubling last year’s Afghan spending. Thought of another way, it breaks down to $12 million per hour in taxpayer dollars for one year. That’s equal to total annual U.S. spending on all veteran’s benefits, from hospital stays to education.

In Afghan terms, our upcoming single year of war costs represents nearly five times that country’s gross domestic product or $3,623.70 for every Afghan woman, man, and child. Given that the average annual salary for an Afghan soldier is $2,880 and many Afghans seek employment in the military purely out of economic desperation, this might be a wise investment — especially since the Taliban is able to pay considerably more for its new recruits. In fact, recent increases in much-needed Afghan recruits appear to correlate with the promise of a pay raise.

All of this is, of course, so much fantasy, since we know just where that $30-plus billion will be going.  In 2010, total Afghanistan War spending since November 2001 will exceed $325 billion, which equals the combined annual military spending of Great Britain, China, France, Japan, Germany, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.  If we had never launched an invasion of Afghanistan or stayed on fighting all these years, those war costs, evenly distributed in this country, would have meant a $2,298.80 dividend per U.S. taxpayer.

Even as we calculate the annual cost of war, the tens of thousands of Asian elephants in the room are all pointing to $1 trillion in total war costs for Iraq and Afghanistan.  The current escalation in Afghanistan coincides with that rapidly-approaching milestone. In fact, thanks to Peter Baker’s recent New York Times report on the presidential deliberations that led to the surge announcement, we know that the trillion-dollar number for both wars may be a gross underestimate. The Office of Management and Budget sent President Obama a memo, Baker tells us, suggesting that adding General McChrystal’s surge to ongoing war costs, over the next 10 years, could mean — forget Iraq — a trillion dollar Afghan War.

At just under one-third of the 2010 U.S. federal budget, $1 trillion essentially defies per-hour-per-soldier calculations. It dwarfs all other nations’ military spending, let alone their spending on war. It makes a mockery of food stamps and schools. To make sense of this cost, we need to leave civilian life behind entirely and turn to another war. We have to reach back to the Vietnam War, which in today’s dollars cost $709.9 billion — or $300 billion less than the total cost of the two wars we’re still fighting, with no end in sight, or even $300 billion less than the long war we may yet fight in Afghanistan.

Jo Comerford is the executive director of the National Priorities Project. Previously, she served as director of programs at the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts and directed the American Friends Service Committee’s justice and peace-related community organizing efforts in western Massachusetts.

[Note: Jo would like to acknowledge the analysis and numbers crunching of Chris Hellman and Mary Orisich, members of the National Priorities Project's research team, without whom this piece would not have been possible.]

Copyright 2009 Jo Comerford

Taiji – A small fishing village with a dirty secret

In Japan, fishermen round up and slaughter hundreds and even thousands of dolphins and other small whales each year.

In the small fishing village of Taiji, entire schools of dolphins are driven into a hidden cove after a prolonged chase. Once trapped inside the cove, the fishermen kill the dolphins, slashing their throats with knives or stabbing them with spears. The water turns red with their blood, and the air fills with their screams.

This brutal massacre — the largest scale dolphin kill in the world — goes on for six months of every year. Even more scandalous, members of the international dolphin display industry take advantage of the dolphin slaughter to obtain some few, show-quality dolphins for use in captive dolphin shows and dolphin swim programs.

It is commonly assumed that Japanese fishermen hunt dolphins to supply a small minority of Japanese people with dolphin meat. But unlike the expensive whale meat, dolphin meat is not considered a delicacy in Japan, and the real reason the Japanese government issues permits to kill dolphins by the thousands every year has nothing to do with food culture. It has to do with pest control. As shocking as it sounds, some Japanese government officials view dolphins as pests to be eradicated in huge numbers. During a meeting at Taiji City Hall, the fishermen of Taiji admitted this to us. “We don’t kill the dolphins primarily for their meat. We kill them as a form of pest control,” they told us. In other words, killing the competition is their way of preserving the ocean’s fish for themselves.

Most likely in order to push the food culture issue even further, the Japanese government recently introduced pilot whale meat to children’s school lunch programs, despite the fact that the meat is tainted with mercury and not fit for human consumption. The Japanese government and the dolphin hunters do not warn the Japanese people of this danger, although the dolphin meat should be labeled as toxic. Much of the tainted dolphin meat ends up as counterfeit whale meat in Tokyo and other large cities.

Science has established that dolphins are highly intelligent and complex marine mammals. How can “pest control” on dolphins continue with so little opposition from the Japanese people and the outside world? The answer is secrecy. Since we first traveled to Japan in 2003 to document the dolphin hunt and expose it to the world, the fishermen have become increasingly paranoid about being photographed and filmed. Today, they hide the dolphin slaughter behind barbed wire, ropes and tarpaulin. Killing the dolphins before daylight breaks, they station guards at the mouth of the killing cove to ensure that no one witnesses the blood bath.

The fishermen say they kill the dolphins “quickly and humanely.” That’s an outright lie. The methods used to kill the dolphins are so savage, it’s hard to believe it unless you witness it for yourself. And once you’ve seen it, the images and sounds of the screaming dolphins never go away. The fishermen know that the world will be outraged when the truth gets out. And so, guided by their government, they hide behind phrases such as “food culture” and “tradition.” They even once told us they are proud of what they do. If they had told us they were having fun while killing dolphins, we would have believed them. We have heard them laugh out loud as they were throwing spears at the dolphins and hauling them ashore with ropes, or dragging still live dolphins by their tail flukes to be slaughtered. If they were really proud of this, then why do they go to such extreme measures hiding it? Why won’t they even let their own people know about the hunt? We asked them this once, and the answer was: “It is none of their business.” But it is their business. The Japanese people have every right to know about the dolphin slaughter. And they have a right to know about the mercury-poisoned dolphin meat that is being fed to their children.

The secret:

It is shocking but true: The dolphin hunt in Japan is supported by people from the international dolphinarium industry. The annual dolphin slaughter provides an easy way for dolphinariums to obtain young, unblemished dolphins, suitable for commercial exploitation in captive dolphin shows and swim-with-dolphins programs. During our documentary work in Japan, we have witnessed dolphin trainers assisting the dolphin hunters during the slaughter process, selecting the best-looking dolphins for themselves and letting the dolphin hunters kill and butcher the rest.

Historically, the capture of dolphins has been highly secretive and rarely photographed, and for decades the multi-billion dollar dolphin captivity industry has claimed that they are capturing and displaying dolphins so that they can sensitize the public to the necessity of protecting dolphins in nature. “We love dolphins,” is the industry’s first line of defense when confronted with the questionable ethics of capturing and confining these free ranging, social and highly complex marine mammals. These very same dolphin trainers and veterinarians who claim to “love dolphins” have showed us the dark side of the dolphin captivity industry. The public will be shocked to learn that the Japanese dolphin massacres and the use of dolphins for public display are strongly connected: The whalers and dolphin trainers, working side by side to exploit the dolphins in the most cruel manner imaginable, have a symbiotic relationship. They both rely on one another to stay in business.

It all comes down to money. A dolphin slaughtered for its meat will bring in about $700. Dolphins captured during a Taiji dolphin drive have been sold to dolphinariums for as much as $154,000 per dolphin! The dolphin killers simply would not be able to prosper on the annual dolphin slaughter if members of the zoo and aquarium industry were not paying top dollar for live dolphins.

Some of the people who are doing business with the whalers in Taiji are westerners. We notice two of them several times during our patrols in Taiji and are able to photograph them at “Dolphin Base,” a captive dolphin facility in Taiji. When the two western dolphin trainers spot us, they scatter like roaches when you turn on the light. The trainers are as paranoid about being caught in the act as the dolphin killers are.

One of the dolphin brokers that do business in Taiji is US citizen Dr. Ted Hammond of Hammond Consultants, Hong Kong Limited. Records are available documenting Hammond trafficking in live dolphins from Taiji. Dr. Hammond’s website can be viewed here: http://www.hammondcon.com/design.htm

Mystery Plane Carries North Korean Holiday Cheer

December 15, 2009:

On December 11th, the U.S. alerted Thailand that a Georgian Il-76 transport, flying from North Korea, to refuel in Thailand, had false documentation, and other problems worth looking into. When the transport arrived, and Thai police checked, they found that the manifest listed the cargo as oil drilling machinery, but the stuff was actually 30 tons of weapons. The crew was arrested, for carrying weapons, and false documents, and the cargo was removed to a safe location.

At first, the crew refused to say what their final destination once. After extensive interrogation, one crew member said the destination was Ukraine. That made no sense. Neither did what the Thai police reported about the cargo. They said it was missiles (that would make sense, if they were high end stuff) and RPG rockets (that would not make sense, because this is cheap stuff). While the Il-76 can carry fifty tons of cargo, air freight  is over a hundred times more expensive that shipping by sea. Which is how North Korea normally smuggles out arms shipments. This air shipment was also avoiding as many countries as possible (flying over international water most of the way from North Korea).

The only reason such cheap weapons are flown by air is when you want to deliver them to criminals (or warlords/rebels in some strife torn part of the world) who are not based near the sea. In any event, North Korea has been busted once more for smuggling weapons, and more interesting details will no doubt emerge from this operation..

A recent UN investigation concluded that North Korea was continuing to export weapons, and using the hard currency obtained to import luxury items for the ruling elite of the communist police state. The UN report detailed North Korean use of false documents and the switching of cargo containers to different ships to throw off investigators.

The North Koreans have also had to come up with a large array of subterfuges to get around growing restrictions on their use of the international banking system. The North Koreans are still getting the weapons out, and the money back. But they are increasingly getting caught. It’s an international game of hide and seek that is hurting the North Korean arms trade, but not stopping it. The report points towards implementing more restrictions on North Korean trade. To be really effective, this requires lots of cooperation from China, where many of the North Korean evasion takes place. For example, North Korean ships go to Chinese ports, where arms cargos (usually in standard shipping containers) are secretly switched to other ships.

In the past, private gunrunners have been known to use Russian made, Cold War surplus, air transports to carry weapons to customers in Africa. The Air Traffic Control in Africa is spotty, and local officials respond well to bribes. Most of those private gunrunners have been put out of business, or retired before they got caught. But North Korea is still in business. The Il-76 grounded by the Thais was recently sold by a Kazakh firm to another in Georgia. The crew consisted of four Kazakhs and one Belorussian.

This story isn’t over yet, but its direction seems pretty clear.

“Climategate”

Hacked e-mails show climate scientists in a bad light but don’t change scientific consensus on global warming.

December 10, 2009

Summary

In late November 2009, more than 1,000 e-mails between scientists at the Climate Research Unit of the U.K.’s University of East Anglia were stolen and made public by an as-yet-unnamed hacker. Climate skeptics are claiming that they show scientific misconduct that amounts to the complete fabrication of man-made global warming. We find that to be unfounded:

• The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.
• Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.
• E-mails being cited as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented. For instance, one e-mail that refers to “hiding the decline” isn’t talking about a decline in actual temperatures as measured at weather stations. These have continued to rise, and 2009 may turn out to be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. The “decline” actually refers to a problem with recent data from tree rings.

Analysis

Skeptics claim this trove of e-mails shows the scientists at the U.K. research center were engaging in evidence-tampering, and they are portraying the affair as a major scandal: “Climategate.” Saudi Arabian climate negotiator Mohammad Al-Sabban went so far as to tell the BBC: “It appears from the details of the scandal that there is no relationship whatsoever between human activities and climate change.” He said that he expected news of the e-mails to disrupt the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen this month. An article from the conservative-leaning Canada Free Press claims that the stolen files are proof of a “deliberate fraud” and “the greatest deception in history.”

Missing the Mark

We find such claims to be far wide of the mark. The e-mails (which have been made available by an unidentified individual here) do show a few scientists talking frankly among themselves — sometimes being rude, dismissive, insular, or even behaving like jerks. Whether they show anything beyond that is still in doubt. There are two investigations underway, by the U.K.’s Met Office and East Anglia University, and the head of CRU, Phil Jones, has “stepped aside” until they are completed. However, many of the e-mails that are being held up as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics eager to find evidence of a conspiracy. And even if they showed what the critics claim, there remains ample evidence that the earth is getting warmer. Even as the affair was unfolding, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Dec. 8 that the 2000-2009 decade would likely be the warmest on record, and that 2009 might be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. (The hottest year on record was 1998.) This conclusion is based not only on the CRU data that critics are now questioning, but also incorporates data from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). All three organizations synthesized data from many sources. Some critics claim that the e-mails invalidate the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world scientific body that reaffirmed in a 2007 report that the earth is warming, sea levels are rising and that human activity is “very likely” the cause of “most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century.” But the IPCC’s 2007 report, its most recent synthesis of scientific findings from around the globe, incorporates data from three working groups, each of which made use of data from a huge number of sources — of which CRU was only one. The synthesis report notes key disagreements and uncertainties but makes the “robust” conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.” (A robust finding is defined as “one that holds under a variety of approaches, methods, models and assumptions, and is expected to be relatively unaffected by uncertainties.”) The IPCC has released a statement playing down the notion that CRU scientists skewed the world body’s report or kept it from considering the views of skeptical scientists:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The entire report writing process of the IPCC is subjected to extensive and repeated review by experts as well as governments. Consequently, there is at every stage full opportunity for experts in the field to draw attention to any piece of literature and its basic findings that would ensure inclusion of a wide range of views. There is, therefore, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.

The facts support this assertion. In one 2004 e-mail that’s come under much scrutiny, Jones wrote of two controversial papers that “Kevin and I will keep them out [of the IPCC report] somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” But both papers under discussion, Kalnay and Cai (2003) and McKitrick and Michaels (2004), were cited in one of the three working group reports from which the 2007 IPCC report is synthesized.

Mixed Messages

The 1,000-plus e-mails sometimes illustrate the hairier side of scientific research. Criticisms of climate change are sometimes dismissed as “fraud” or “pure crap,” as in this 2005 e-mail from CRU Director Phil Jones. Other messages, like a 2007 e-mail from Michael Mann of Penn State University, show indignation at being the target of skeptics’ ire. Some of the e-mails are in bad form; for instance, climate scientist Benjamin Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory makes a crack about “beat[ing] the crap out of” opponent Pat Michaels.

Claims that the e-mails are evidence of fraud or deceit, however, misrepresent what they actually say. A prime example is a 1999 e-mail from Jones, who wrote: “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e., from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” Skeptics claim the words “trick” and “decline” show Jones is using sneaky manipulations to mask a decline in global temperatures. But that’s not the case. Actual temperatures, as measured by scientific instruments such as thermometers, were rising at the time of the writing of this decade-old e-mail, and (as we’ve noted) have continued to rise since then. Jones was referring to the decline in temperatures implied by measurements of the width and density of tree rings. In recent decades, these measures indicate a dip, while more accurate instrument-measured temperatures continue to rise.

Scientists at CRU use tree-ring data and other “proxy” measurements to estimate temperatures from times before instrumental temperature data began to be collected. However, since about 1960, tree-ring data have diverged from actual measured temperatures. Far from covering it up, CRU scientists and others have published reports of this divergence many times. The “trick” that Jones was writing about in his 1999 e-mail was simply adding the actual, measured instrumental data into a graph of historic temperatures. Jones says it’s a “trick” in the colloquial sense of an adroit feat — “a clever thing to do,” as he put it — not a deception. What’s hidden is the fact that tree-ring data in recent decades doesn’t track with thermometer measurements. East Anglia Research Professor Andrew Watson explained in an article in The Times of London:

Watson: Jones is talking about a line on a graph for the cover of a World Meteorological Organisation report, published in 2000, which shows the results of different attempts to reconstruct temperature over the past 1,000 years. The line represents one particular attempt, using tree-ring data for temperature. The method agrees with actual measurements before about 1960, but diverges from them after that — for reasons only partly understood, discussed in the literature.

Other quotes that skeptics say are evidence of “data manipulation” actually refer to how numbers are presented, not to falsifying those numbers. For instance, in one e-mail climate scientist Tom Crowley writes: “I have been fiddling with the best way to illustrate the stable nature of the medieval warm period.” Crowley is referring to the best way to translate the data into a graphic format. We’re the first to admit that charts and graphs can give a false or misleading impression of what data actually show. In the past, for instance, we’ve criticized a pie chart used by some liberals to make military spending look like a much larger slice of the federal budget than it really is. In fact, it’s been a major contention of climate change skeptics that a so-called “hockey stick” chart, so named because it shows a steep climb in temperatures in the last few decades, exaggerates the true extent of warming. That claim is contradicted by climate scientists, including the creator of one of the most contended “hockey stick” charts, and we make no judgment about that dispute here. We simply note that “fiddling” with the way data are displayed — even in a way that some may see as misleading — is not the same thing as falsifying the numbers. Much has also been made of the scientists’ discussion of Freedom of Information Act requests for their raw data. In fact, the vast majority of CRU’s data is already freely available. According to the University of East Anglia, a small amount of the data is restricted by non-publication agreements. Discussion of British FOIA requests in the stolen e-mails show scientists bristling at demands that they supply records of their own correspondence, computer code and data to people whose motives they question. In one e-mail about a request for data and correspondence, Santer writes critically of Steven McIntyre, a Canadian science blogger who runs the Climateaudit.org Web site:

Ben Santer e-mail, Nov. 12, 2009: My personal opinion is that both FOI requests [for data related to a 2008 paper and for correspondence dating back to 2006] are intrusive and unreasonable. Steven McIntyre provides absolutely no scientific justification or explanation for such requests. … McIntyre has no interest in improving our scientific understanding of the nature and causes of climate change. He has no interest in rational scientific discourse. He deals in the currency of threats and intimidation. We should be able to conduct our scientific research without constant fear of an “audit” by Steven McIntyre; without having to weigh every word we write in every email we send to our scientific colleagues.

It’s clear from the e-mails that there are people with whom the scientists would rather not share. What’s less clear is whether any deliberate obstruction actually occurred — that’s one of the subjects of the East Anglia investigation. Some e-mails refer to long discussions with lawyers and university officials about what the scientists may, or must, make available and to whom. In others, scientists let their critics know directly that data are freely accessible, or mention that they’ve already sent the information along, though they may not fulfill their opponents’ every informational wish. Climate change skeptics also say that the e-mails prove they’ve been excluded from peer review. In one e-mail, for example, climate scientist Tom Wigley of the University Corporation for Academic Research writes: “If you think that [Yale professor James] Saiers is in the greenhouse skeptics camp, then, if we can find documentary evidence of this, we could go through official AGU channels to get him ousted.” Saiers later departed from the journal in question (Geophysical Research Letters, or GRL). However, Saiers says he isn’t a warming skeptic and that Wigley had nothing to do with his departure. When another professor (and blogger) asked Saiers about the Wigley e-mail, Saiers responded: “I stepped down as GRL editor at the end of my three-year term. … My departure had nothing to do with attempts by Wigley or anyone else to have me sacked.” Investigators are still sifting through 13 years’ worth of CRU e-mails looking for evidence of impropriety. But what’s been revealed so far hasn’t shaken the broad scientific consensus about global warming. In an open letter to Congress posted on Climate Science Watch and other sites, 25 leading climate scientists (including eight members of the National Academy of Science) wrote:

Letter to Congress from U.S. scientists, Dec. 4: The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming. … Even without including analyses from the UK research center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence underlying our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust.

Confusing the Public

News converage of the e-mails and the various claims about what they supposedly show may have contributed to public confusion on the subject. A Dec. 3 Rasmussen survey found that only 25 percent of adults surveyed said that “most scientists agree on global warming” while 52 percent said that “there is significant disagreement within the scientific community” and 23 percent said they were not sure. The truth is that over the 13 years covered by the CRU e-mails, scientific consensus has only become stronger as the evidence for global warming from various sources has  mounted. Reports from the National Academies and the U.S. Global Change Research Program that analyze large amounts of data from various sources also agree, as does the IPCC, that climate change is not in doubt. In advance of the 2009 U.N. climate change summit, the national academies of 13 nations issued a joint statement of their recommendations for combating climate change, in which they discussed the “human forcing” of global warming and said that the need for action was “indisputable.” Leading scientists are unequivocally reaffirming the consensus on global warming in the wake of “Climategate.” White House science adviser John Holdren said at a congressional hearing on climate change: ”However this particular controversy comes out, the result will not call into question the bulk of our understanding of how the climate works or how humans are affecting it.” The American Association for the Advancement of Science released a statement “reaffirm[ing] the position of its Board of Directors and the leaders of 18 respected organizations, who concluded based on multiple lines of scientific evidence that global climate change caused by human activities is now underway, and it is a growing threat to society.” The American Meteorological Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists have also reiterated their positions on climate change, which they say are unaffected by the leaked e-mails.

– by Jess Henig

Sources

Walsh, Bryan. “Has ‘Climategate’ Been Overblown?” TIME. 7 Dec 2009.

Black, Richard. “Climate e-mail hack ‘will impact on Copenhagen summit.’” BBC News. 3 Dec 2009.

Ball, Tim. “The Death Blow to Climate Science.” Canada Free Press. 21 Nov 2009.

Webster, Ben. “Met Office to re-examine 160 years of climate data.” The Times of London. 5 Dec 2009.

BBC News. “Chair for climate e-mail review.” 3 Dec 2009.

Satter, Raphael G. “Climate-unit chief steps aside amid probe.” Associated Press. 2 Dec 2009.

Sandell, Clayton. “Climate: 2009 Caps Hottest Decade on Record.” ABC News. 8 Dec 2009.

World Meteorological Association. “2000-2009, The Warmest Decade.” Press release. 8 Dec 2009.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “Statement on News Reports Regarding Hacking of the East Anglia University Email Communications.” 4 Dec 2009.

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Senate GOP denied on spending filibuster attempt

WASHINGTON—The Democratic-controlled Senate on Saturday cleared away a Republican filibuster of a huge end-of-year spending bill that rewards most federal agencies with generous budget boosts.

The $1.1 trillion measure combines much of the year’s unfinished budget work—only a $626 billion Pentagon spending measure would remain—into a 1,000-plus-page spending bill that would give the Education Department, the State Department, the Department of Health and Human Services and others increases far exceeding inflation.

The 60-34 vote met the minimum threshold to end the GOP filibuster. A final vote was set for Sunday afternoon to send the measure to President Barack Obama.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. speaks to a reporter, after voting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009.

Democrats held the vote open for an hour to accommodate Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an Orthodox Jew who walked more than three miles to the Capitol to vote on the Sabbath after attending services at his synagogue in the city’s Georgetown neighborhood. Lieberman wore a black wool overcoat and brilliant orange scarf—as well as a wide grin—as he provided the crucial 60th vote.

The measure combines $447 billion in operating budgets with about $650 billion in mandatory payments for federal benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. It wraps together six individual spending bills and also contains more than 5,000 back-home projects sought by lawmakers in both parties.

The measure provides spending increases averaging about 10 percent to programs under immediate control of Congress, blending increases for veterans’ programs, NASA and the FBI with a pay raise for federal workers and help for car dealers.

It bundles six of the 12 annual spending bills, capping a dysfunctional appropriations process for budget year that began Oct. 1, dysfunctional appropriations process in which House leaders blocked Republicans from debating key issues and Senate Republicans dragged out debates.

Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., arrive for a vote in the Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009.

Just the $626 billion defense bill would remain. That’s being held back to serve as a vehicle to advance must-pass legislation such as a plan to allow the government’s debt to swell by nearly $2 trillion. The government’s total debt has nearly doubled in the past seven years and is expected to exceed the current ceiling of $12.1 trillion before Jan. 1.

Republicans said the measure—on top of February’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill and a generous omnibus measure for the 2009 budget year—spends too much money in a time when the government is running astronomical deficits.

“Obviously we need to run the government, but do you suppose the government could be a little bit like families and be just a little bit prudent in how much it spends?” said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., speaks to reporters after voting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009.

But the second-ranking Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said the measure restores money for programs cut under President George W. Bush such as popular grant programs for local police departments to purchase equipment and put more officers on the beat.

The measure contains 5,224 pet projects for lawmakers totaling $3.9 billion, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who leads the transportation, housing and community development spending panel, obtained 61 earmarks worth $68.8 million in programs under her jurisdiction, including $1.2 million for infrastructure improvements for the Port of Everett.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., is seen after voting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009.

Her GOP counterpart, Christopher Bond of Missouri, pulled down 21 projects worth $32.5 million from some portion of the bill, including $2.5 million for a community center in Kansas City.

Saturday’s bill would offer an improved binding arbitration process to challenge the decision by General Motors and Chrysler to close more than 2,000 dealerships, which often anchor fading small town business districts. It also would renew for two more years a federal loan guarantee program for steel companies.

The bill also caps a heated debate over Obama’s order to close the military-run prison for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It would permit detainees held there to be transferred to the United States to stand trial but not to be released.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., hurries to catch a flight after voting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2009.

The bill would void a long-standing ban on the funding of abortion by the District of Columbia government and overturns a ban on federal money for needle exchange programs in the city. It also would phase out a D.C. school voucher program favored by Republicans and opens the door for the city to permit medical marijuana.

It would also lift a nationwide ban on the use of federal funds for needle-exchange programs.

Federal workers would receive pay increases averaging 2 percent, with people in areas with higher living costs receiving slightly higher increases.

Three Republicans helped Democrats advance the measure: Sens. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Richard Shelby of Alabama and Susan Collins of Maine.

The Democrats opposed were Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, and Claire McCaskill of Missouri—who voted “no” only after Lieberman arrived to ensure the bill would advance.

Inequitable.  Unconscionable. Vexatious. Opprobrious.

These are just a few of the choice words a New York state judge used to describe the behavior of Indymac in a decision in which he wiped out the $292,500 sub-prime mortgage owed by a homeowner to the bank.

Indymac began foreclosure proceedings in 2004 on the home of defendant Dana Yano-Horoski in East Patchogue, New York.

Judge Jeffrey Spinner said that it became clear to the court at a September 2009 settlement conference — one that had been postponed five times due to Indymac’s failure to “cooperate” — that Indymac “had no good faith intention whatsoever of resolving this matter in any manner other than complete and forcible devolution of title…”

The judge repeatedly stated that the homeowners were willing to work out a deal and could do so, and noted Indymac’s repeated failure to make concessions, including the fact that they denied an offer by the defendants’ daughter to purchase the home at fair market value with third-party financing.

The court found that Indymac’s conduct was “wholly unsupportable at law or in equity, greatly egregious and so completely devoid of good faith that equity cannot be permitted on its behalf.”

And thus, finding that if he just dismissed the foreclosure action he “cannot be assured that Plaintiff will not repeat this course of conduct,” he concluded the most effective course of action would be to cancel the entire mortgage.

Skinner leads a foreclsoure unit created “to accommodate settlement conferences that have reached 2,400″ in his county, according to the New York Law Journal.

California State University reimbursed a high-ranking official in the chancellor’s office $152,441 for expenses he should not have billed to the university, according to a report released Thursday by the state auditor.

Between July 2005 and July 2008, the official billed CSU for expensive hotel stays, travel around the world, meals that cost nearly $167 a head, phone and Internet service at home, and more than $43,000 for commuting between his home in Northern California and his job at the chancellor’s office in Long Beach, according to the audit.

The audit by Elaine Howle does not name the CSU official. It says he worked in the information technology services department and left the university in July 2008.

A spokeswoman for CSU said the subject of the audit is David J. Ernst, who earned an annual salary of $204,420 when he left Cal State. Ernst now works for the University of California as the chief information officer, drawing an annual salary of $238,000.

Howle called attention to Ernst’s frequent global travel, including trips to Amsterdam, Singapore, London and Melbourne, Australia.

“We found the official took trips that did not appear to have a clear or demonstrable benefit to the state or university. In addition, there was no need for the official to regularly attend nonuniversity events, particularly given the costs involved,” she wrote.

Even his domestic travels were unusually costly, the audit says. Ernst billed the university for a $672-a-night hotel stay to attend a two-day meeting at a resort in Pebble Beach. The airfare for that trip was $662, the audit says.

In another instance described in the audit, Ernst billed the university for four nights at a hotel in San Francisco – at $450 a night – when records show he only stayed there for three.

The university did not exercise enough oversight, Howle claims, and violated its own policies in approving the reimbursements.

“The official consistently failed to follow university policies in submitting requests for reimbursement. In addition, the official’s supervisor and the university failed to adequately review the official’s expense reimbursement claims and follow long-established policies and procedures designed to ensure accuracy and adequate control of expenses,” the audit says.

The CSU chancellor’s office agreed with most of the auditor’s findings and recommendations, the report says. The university agreed it should try to get Ernst to pay back some of the money and scrutinize its reimbursement procedures. But the university did not agree with the auditor that much of Ernst’s travel was unnecessary.

“The university asserted that many of the trips were necessary to maintain a relationship with a particular vendor in whose software the university had made a substantial investment,” the audit says. “Nonetheless, the university still failed to clearly identify how the official’s extensive travel provided it concrete and measurable benefits.”

The CSU faculty union blasted the administration for its lax oversight during a fiscal crisis. Because of state budget cuts, professors are taking furloughs, students are paying higher fees and courses are being cut.

“This improper use of public funds could not have come at a worse time for students and faculty at the CSU,” Lillian Taiz, president of the California Faculty Association, said in a statement. “The $152,441 wasted by this individual should have gone to pay for class sections. This behavior would be inappropriate even in better times, but under the current economic circumstances it is beyond reprehensible.”

Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco), a frequent critic of university management, called on Ernst to pay CSU $152,441 for the expenses the auditor found were improperly billed. He also asked CSU Chancellor Charles Reed and UC President Mark Yudof to publicly report all payments made to executives.

“The public deserves to know the extent of this problem,” Yee said in a statement. “Considering the culture of secrecy and corruption within the UC and CSU administration, it is highly unlikely this is an isolated incident.”

The audit is at: bsa.ca.gov/pdfs/reports/I2007-1158.pdf

Congress scrutinizes Obama’s Afghanistan plan

by D. Morris, AP

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Appearing on network news shows a day after President Barack Obama announced his plan to send in 30,000 more U.S. forces, Biden said the principal aim of the new policy is to protect the United States from further terrorist attack while also keeping the Taliban from overrunning the country.

Democrats complained about Obama’s escalation of the 8-year-old war, however. And Republicans are unhappy with his promise to withdraw troops in 18 months. But Congress appears nevertheless willing to approve the buildup’s $30 billion price tag.

Sen. John McCain, who lost to Obama in last year’s presidential election, reiterated Wednesday that while he supports the president’s build up, he believes it’s a mistake to signal in advance when a troop withdrawal might begin. Obama said in his prime-time West Point speech Tuesday that it could commence as early as July 2011.

The Arizona Republican said: “We don’t want to sound an uncertain trumpet to our friends in the region.”

On Capitol Hill, Congress is ready to use two days of high-profile hearings on the war, beginning later Wednesday, to express its misgivings. Obama’s escalation strategy won quick backing from NATO allies. Afghan leaders praised the speech, but had questions about the 18-month timetable for withdrawal.

And a Taliban spokesman said Wednesday that Obama’s plan was “no solution” to Afghanistan’s troubles.

Of Karzai, Biden said the plan was an unmistakable warning.

“The purpose is to make it clear to Karzai and his government, which have up to now been unwilling to step up to the ball, to make it clear that you now have to step up to the ball,” the vice president said.

Obama pledged Tuesday night to an audience of Army cadets at the U.S. Military Academy that the shift from surge to exit strategy would depend on the military situation in Afghanistan.

“We will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground,” Obama said, declaring that the nation’s security was at stake and that the additional troops were needed to “bring this war to a successful conclusion.”

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which planned to grill top administration officials Wednesday on Obama’s decision, said that he expected the administration to submit a new war spending request and that Democrats would back it.

The planned infusion of 30,000 U.S. troops would raise the total American military presence in Afghanistan to about 100,000.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was expected to tell Levin’s panel that the president’s strategy “will make real and measurable progress over the next 18-24 months,” said spokesman Geoff Morrell.

Biden was asked about doubts he was said to have had about escalating the war.

“I’ve never publicly said what my position is because I reserve that for the president,” he replied. “But I was skeptical of taking our eye off the ball. The ball is al-Qaida. That’s the reason we’re there. They are in Pakistan, the Taliban leadership is in Pakistan. And I wanted to make sure the focus stayed on those two elements of our concern and didn’t sort of morph into a nation-building exercise that would tie us down for 10 years and in fact not be of any assistance in meeting what is the real threat to the U.S. — that is al-Qaida and the most extreme forces that are in Pakistan and wanting to topple Pakistan.”

Many Democrats said they weren’t convinced that sending more troops would hasten an end to the war. They also question whether the money used for troop deployments will drain resources from other domestic priorities, like health care and job creation.

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., called the plan “an expensive gamble to undertake armed nation-building on behalf of a corrupt government of questionable legitimacy.”

After meeting Wednesday with Karzai, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal called Karzai’s reaction to the new U.S. strategy “really positive. The president was very upbeat, very resolute this morning.”

McChrystal, Obama’s field commander in Afghanistan, said U.S. and NATO forces would hand over responsibility for the fight against the Taliban to Afghan security forces “as rapidly as conditions allow.”

Afghan Interior Minister Hanif Atmar, who also met with McChrystal, sought more details about how the Afghan security forces would be trained and expanded in the next 18 months — a time frame that he said was too short for a complete handoff from international forces.

“That kind of time frame will give us momentum,” Atmar said. “We are hoping that there will be clarity in terms of long-term growth needs of the Afghan national security forces and what can be achieved in 18 months.”

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he expected the allies to bolster the American buildup with more than 5,000 additional troops. He said the best way to overcome widespread public opposition in Europe is by demonstrating progress, starting by transferring control of parts of the country to the Afghan government.

“Albania will respond positively to such a commitment and for sure that we will send additional troops again,” Albanian Foreign Minister Ilir Meta said, without specifying how many extra troops his country might send. Albania currently has 250 troops in Afghanistan.

At a meeting of foreign ministers in Athens, Greece, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg said: “Some countries are ready now to make commitments to provide additional troops or additional funds, some are now just examining it. We understand that they need a little bit of time to digest exactly what the president’s proposed.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Obama’s speech as “courageous, determined and lucid” but stopped short of pledging additional French troops.

Biden and McCain appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CBS’s “The Early Show,” and NBC’s “Today” program.