2015 likely to be hottest year ever recorded

The Associated Press reports: Earth dialed the heat up in June, smashing warm temperature records for both the month and the first half of the year.

Off-the-charts heat is “getting to be a monthly thing,” said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. June was the fourth month of 2015 that set a record, she said.

“There is almost no way that 2015 isn’t going to be the warmest on record,” she added.

NOAA calculated that the world’s average temperature in June hit 61.48 degrees Fahrenheit (16.33 Celsius), breaking the old record set last year by 0.22 degrees (.12 degrees Celsius). Usually temperature records are broken by one or two one-hundredths of a degree, not nearly a quarter of a degree, Blunden said. [Continue reading…]

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Organic farms don’t have the tiny carbon footprint they like to tout. But they could

Julius McGee writes: Can organic agriculture mitigate climate change? If you were to simply Google the question – which, being a millennial I have done – you would be led to believe that it does. I love a good underdog story and, like The Little Engine That Could, I think a lot of things are possible through optimism and hard work. But advocates of for organic farming, like the United Nations Food and Drug Administration, think that it can mitigate climate change without the hard work necessary to truly make it happen.

A recent study by the Rodale Institute found that, if all conventional agricultural land started using organic farming practices, such as mulch tilling and seasonal crop rotations, agriculture could – in theory – capture 100% of annual carbon emissions. The study also found that organic farms have lower greenhouse emissions than conventional farms due to avoidance of synthetic fertilizers, which are compounded with nitrogen and require fossil fuels to produce. However, some studies have argued that it conclusion is premature as lower emissions depend on the amount fertilizers used on organic and conventional farms and the amount of food that can be produced per acre of land.

In a research article I published in 2014, regarding the ability of organic farming to reduce greenhouse gas emission in the Agriculture and Human Values, I argued that recent patterns in the organic market in the United States limit the ability of organic farming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. [Continue reading…]

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Netanyahu steered U.S. toward war with Iran — the result is a deal he hates

Shibley Telhami writes: Much of the criticism of the Iran nuclear deal has focused on the fact that it is entirely limited to the nuclear issue, which leaves Iran a free hand — and new resources — to continue policies that have angered regional and international players. There is no denying that if Iran plays its hands well and uses the next decade to build its economic and political potential, its regional influence is likely to expand, as is its capacity to do the sort of things that have angered Israel and Gulf Arab states.

The deal’s biggest critic may be Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called it “a historic mistake.” The irony is that the urgency with which the Obama administration pursued a nuclear deal was itself a product of Israeli actions. For Netanyahu, the deal was a good example of “be careful what you wish for.”

A little reminder is helpful here. To his credit, President Barack Obama succeeded early in his first term to get international support for sanctioning Iran — one critical reason for Iran’s willingness to take the negotiations more seriously. There have been deliberate and sustained efforts to continue pressuring Iran on multiple levels, including its behavior outside the nuclear issue. [Continue reading…]

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Iran is drama, but Iraq is destiny

Rami G Khouri writes: The dramatic events surrounding the intense negotiations for a deal on Iran’s nuclear industry and the sanctions on it deserve immense attention because of what they tell us about two pivotal dynamics in the Middle East, namely the role of Iran in the region and the world and the more mature attitude of the United States towards countries and movements that it disagrees with, like Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and others. Yet, despite the momentous impact of an agreement on Iran, the dynamic this week that I am watching much more closely is the offensive launched Monday by the Iraqi government to retake Anbar Province from the hands of “Islamic State” (IS). Anbar Province’s convoluted and fast changing condition in the past decade is a sign of wider stresses that plague Iraq, including the province’s successive anti-American, anti-Islamic State in Mesopotamia, and anti-Baghdad rebellions, its gradual loss to IS during the past year, and Baghdad’s current strategy to return it to the fold of the Iraqi state.

What happens in Iraq in the coming months and years matters dearly to the entire Arab world because Anbar’s turbulent recent history and its current condition manifest the most fundamental and crucial issues that still challenge most Arab states, and are likely to determine if they persist as sovereign, stable states. These issues relate to the ability of citizens and state to negotiate a social contract that ensures good governance and equitable participation and life opportunities for all citizens, which in turn would guarantee stability and security, and probably also prosperity, given Iraq’s immense natural and human resources. A social contract that meets these criteria has evaded every single Arab country in the past century — only because not a single Arab country (before Tunisia since 2011) ever attempted to credibly engage its citizens in the process of shaping public life, governance, participation, accountability, national values, and state policies. The test that Iraq and all Arab countries face is how to allow populations composed of several different ethnic and religious groups to work together within the context of the institutions and national integrity of their state. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS is here to stay

Andrew J. Bowen and Courtney Bliler write: As the United States struggles to grapple with a strategy in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is growing more diffuse yet more salient. In Kuwait, a suicide bombing at a Shia mosque on June 26 killed 27 people. In France on that same day, one man was beheaded in an attempt to blow up an American-owned chemical plant. In Tunisia, the massacre of 38 tourists at a beach resort in Sousse has prompted the Tunisian government to declare a state of emergency. ISIS claimed responsibility for all three attacks and is now actively recruiting Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. These events ignite fears that ISIS could gain formal footholds in other states besides Syria, Libya, and Iraq and mobilize sleeper cells to perpetrate remote terrorist attacks.

“The army of terror will be with us indefinitely.” This argument, made by columnists Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan in their new book ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, seems supported by recent events. The book seeks to answer the question: “Where did ISIS come from, and how did it manage to do so much damage in so short a period of time?” Starting from the early life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of ISIS’s organizational ancestor Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the authors paint a detailed historical narrative of the ideological and political evolution of ISIS.

Most importantly, their argument strikes down the assumption often embedded in government statements, media stories, and public sentiment that ISIS’s power is only temporary and that it, like its peers and predecessors, can be resolutely targeted, denied safe haven, defeated and ultimately destroyed. ISIS is not merely a terrorist group, Weiss and Hassan point out. Rather, ISIS is a “conventional military that mobilizes and deploys foot soldiers with a professional acumen that has impressed members of the U.S. military.” It is also a “mafia adept at exploiting decades-old transnational gray markets for oil and arms trafficking.” ISIS is an experienced “intelligence-gathering apparatus.” The extremist group is a polished and effective “propaganda machine.” These differences, Weiss and Hassan argue, distinguish the success of ISIS from the stagnation or failure of its predecessors, namely Al Qaeda. ISIS is here to stay.

Hassan and Weiss note that ISIS, for all its singularity, still borrows a number of traditions from its jihadi progenitors. Many of ISIS’s current trademarks—fondness for televised beheadings, mobilization of fighters through mass media, and fixation on killing Westerners, Shi’ites, and non-Salafist Sunnis alike—find their origins in al-Zarqawi’s fringe interpretation of takfiri ideology, which emphasizes targeting Shia and non-Salafi “apostates” before turning to the United States and Middle Eastern regimes colluding with the “far enemy.” The group has learned from the mistakes of its predecessors and actively creates its own narrative, rather than allowing the foreign press to drive popular perceptions about the group.

The law of unintended consequences is the most common refrain in Weiss and Hassan’s narrative. [Continue reading…]

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At least 130 are dead in Iraq after a massive bomb attack

The Washington Post reports: The death toll from a bombing at a crowded marketplace in eastern Iraq climbed to as many as 130 on Saturday, Iraqi officials said, marking the Islamic State’s worst single bombing attack on a civilian target in the country.

Imad Muthanna, a spokesman for the Diyala provincial council, said that in addition to those killed, 20 more people were missing after a suicide bomber drove a truck packed with explosives into a market in Khan Bani Saad on Friday night. A Diyala health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give out information, said 126 people had been killed, but expected the number to continue to climb.

The market in the largely Shiite town 20 miles northeast of Baghdad was teeming with families making preparations for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr as the blast tore through the street with devastating impact, collapsing several buildings. Bodies littered the area as secondary fires spread.

Islamic State militants, and al-Qaeda before them, have carried out scores of bombings against civilians as they seek to destabilize the country and expand their territory. However, Friday night’s blast was the biggest in Iraq since the group announced its self-declared state a year ago. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press lists: the deadliest attacks in Iraq since the US pullout.

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Baby fighters: A chilling new trend in ISIS

Joanna Paraszczuk reports: The baby in the photograph above grins happily at the camera, his brown eyes wide open in delight and his white jersey showing the remains of a recent meal.

It could be a picture taken by any proud parent — except this baby’s father is a militant who has dressed him up to look just like his daddy.

His father, an Islamic State (IS) fighter from Kazakhstan named Artyom, has tied a black headband around his son’s forehead. Like the IS flag, it bears the Islamic shahada, the Islamic statement of faith, in white.

The photo was posted on the Russian social network VKontakte on July 14. [Continue reading…]

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Libya: An execution designed to humiliate the local ISIS leader

The Daily Beast reports: In a scene of medieval brutality, a jihadi group fighting to control a strategically important Libyan port captured ISIS’s local commander there, paraded him through the streets amid the taunts of onlookers, and then walked him to a gallows, where he was hanged.

The public spectacle—the details of which have not been previously reported in the Western press—was meant to send a message to local residents: Side with ISIS, and this is your fate. But it also vividly conveyed that, despite ISIS’s territorial gains in Syria and Iraq, the self-proclaimed caliphate does not exercise total control of Libya, a fractured country that it’s trying to use as a safe-haven, training ground, and potential launching point for attacks in North Africa and potentially Europe.

The execution in the eastern city of Derna was described to The Daily Beast by two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity and are familiar with video footage of the shaming and hanging. U.S. government intelligence analysts have also seen the footage, the sources said.

The ISIS commander was marched through the street “Cersei Lannister-style,” one source said, an allusion to the queen mother in Game of Thrones, who, in the series’ recent season finale, is forced to walk naked through the streets to atone for her sins. [Continue reading…]

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Scores killed in bombing in Turkey, close to Syrian border

The New York Times reports: A large explosion at a cultural center in the Turkish town of Suruc, near Syria, on Monday killed at least 28 people and wounded 100 others, the prime minister’s office said.

Turkish government officials have called the bombing a terrorist attack and said that initial evidence suggested that two suicide bombers had caused it.

“We believe today’s terrorist attack to be an act of retaliation against the Turkish government’s continued effort to fight terrorism,” said an official at the office of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

The attack took place two weeks after Turkey stepped up efforts to combat Islamic extremists through a series of raids that resulted in arrests across the country. On Saturday, Turkish security forces arrested nearly 500 people trying to cross into Syria through Turkey. [Continue reading…]

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Tens of thousands of Syrians, Yemenis, and others seeking refuge in Europe

The Daily Beast reports: At first glance, nothing seems amiss on Greece’s northern border. Corn and wheat are slowly ripening in fields on the frontier with the former Yugoslav Macedonia. Along their edges, the uncultivated dirt bursts forth with poppies and chicory.

At dusk, the scene comes to life: Scores of people emerge from among the stands of poplars and plane trees that line the Vardar River. By nightfall, groups of hikers carrying backpacks and long walking sticks made from stripped branches gather at the borderline, preparing to cross north. They speak little, and only in whispers.

Almost all of them are fleeing war or repression in Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Most are trying to get to Germany, where they hope to apply for political or humanitarian asylum. They hope to follow the Vardar valley all the way to Serbia, often walking on a freight track that follows the river’s gentle contours. From there, they plan to walk through Hungary and Austria.

The leader of one such group explained why he was there with his two eldest sons, aged 15 and 16. “I decided to leave Yemen so that I will never see my children fight for al Qaeda or any other side. Sooner or later, one militia or another will approach them.” Hashim, as he identifies himself, has had to leave behind a wife and four younger children he may never see again. [Continue reading…]

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UN moves to lift sanctions on Iran after nuclear deal

The New York Times reports: The United Nations Security Council on Monday unanimously approved a resolution that creates the basis for international economic sanctions against Iran to be lifted, a move that incited a furious reaction in Israel and potentially sets up an angry showdown in Congress.

The 15-0 vote for approval of the resolution — 104 pages long including annexes and lists — was written in Vienna by diplomats who negotiated a landmark pact last week that limits Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for ending the sanctions.

Iran has pledged to let in international monitors to inspect its facilities for the next 10 years and other measures that were devised to guarantee that its nuclear energy activities are purely peaceful.

The Security Council resolution, which is legally binding, lays out the steps required only for the lifting of United Nations sanctions.

It has no legal consequence on the sanctions imposed separately by the United States and the European Union.

The European Union also approved the Iran nuclear deal on Monday, putting in motion the lifting of its own sanctions, which include prohibitions on the purchase of Iranian oil. Europe will continue to prohibit the export of ballistic missile technology and sanctions related to human rights. [Continue reading…]

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The oceans are warming faster than climate models predicted

John Abraham writes: As I have said many times on this blog, if you want to know how much “global warming” is happening, you really have to be able to measure “ocean warming”. That is because more than 90% of the excess energy coming to the Earth from greenhouse gases goes into the ocean waters. My colleagues and I have a new publication, which better characterizes this heating and also compares climate model predictions with actual measurements. It turns out models have under-predicted ocean warming over the past few decades.

But how would you measure the ocean? How would you make consistent, long-term measurements that would allow people to compare ocean heat from decades ago to today? How would you make enough measurements throughout the ocean so that we have a true global picture?

This is one of the most challenging problems in climate science, and one that my colleagues and I are working hard on. We look throughout measurement history; first measurements were made with canvas buckets, then insulated buckets, and other more progressively complex devices. Many measurements were made along ocean passageways as ships transported goods across the planet. [Continue reading…]

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Arctic sea ice volume showed strong recovery in 2013

The Guardian reports: Ice in the Arctic staged a surprise revival in 2013, bucking the long-term trend of decline, according to the first analysis of the entire ice cap’s volume. The revival was the result of cooler temperatures that year and suggests that, if global warming was curbed, the Arctic might recover more rapidly than previously thought.

The shrinking Arctic ice cap is one of the best known impacts of climate change. The indication that it could be reversible is rare good news for a region where climate change has driven up temperatures far faster than the global average.

The extent of Arctic ice has shrunk by 40% since the late 1970s, when satellite measurements began. But getting comprehensive data on the thickness of the ice, rather than just its area, was difficult until the European Space Agency launched the Cryosat satellite in 2010.

The satellite’s 88 million measurements, analysed in Nature Geoscience, show that from 2010-12 the Arctic ice volume fell by 14%, in step with the warming trend of the last few decades. But in 2013, the ice volume jumped up by 41%. [Continue reading…]

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Agent Orange: A chemical cocktail that killed a countryside and scarred a people

Lily Bui writes: Mangroves are sturdy trees. Recognizable by their extensive root systems, these trees can thrive in muddy soil, sand, peat, even coral. They tolerate water much saltier than most other plants and survive flooding during severe storms. It is perhaps their sturdiness that led mangroves to be one of the most significant targets in the Vietnam War.

During the war, communist guerilla fighters would often take refuge in Vietnam’s thick jungles. Mangroves, among other types of flora, provided shelter from eyes in the sky seeking to deliver air strikes in strategic locations. So the U.S. military exposed guerillas by bombarding the trees themselves with huge amounts of defoliants, chemical herbicides that cause the leaves to fall off of plants. The most infamous defoliant was Agent Orange, named for the orange stripes marking the drums it was shipped in.

The defoliant is an equal mix of two herbicides, 2,4-diclorophenoxyacetic acide (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). When sprayed on foliage during the war, it quickly stripped off the leaves, revealing anyone and anything below the canopy, destroying crops, and clearing vegetation near U.S. bases. By the end of the campaign, U.S. military forces had sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange on over 5 million acres of upland and mangrove forests and about 500,000 acres of crops—an area the size of Massachusetts, and about 24 percent of South Vietnam. Some areas of Laos and Cambodia along the Vietnam border were also sprayed. This massive effort, known as Operation Ranch Hand, lasted from 1962 to 1971. [Continue reading…]

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Jason Leopold — a wizard at prying information from the government

The New York Times reports: When the reporter Jason Leopold gets ready to take on the United States government, he psychs himself up by listening to the heavy metal bands Slayer and Pantera.

Mr. Leopold describes himself as “a pretty rageful guy.” He argued recently with staff members at his son’s preschool because he objected to their references to “Indians” and they objected to his wearing family-unfriendly punk rock T-shirts to school meetings.

Mr. Leopold, 45, who works for Vice News, reserves most of his aggression for dealing with the government. He has revealed about 20,000 pages of government documents, some of them the basis for explosive news stories. Despite his appearance — on a recent day his T-shirt featured the band name “Sick of It All” — his secret weapon is the opposite of anarchic: an encyclopedic knowledge of the Freedom of Information Act, the labyrinthine administration machine that serves it and the kind of legal judo often required to pry information from it.

His small office, just off the kitchen in his home here, is littered with envelopes from various branches of the government and computer disks filled with secrets. His persistence has led to numerous revelations — some in documents that have been released exclusively to him, and others in documents that have been released to multiple reporters after pressure has been brought by Mr. Leopold. [Continue reading…]

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ISIS in Gaza? Bombings target Hamas and Islamic Jihad

The New York Times reports: A series of explosions destroyed several vehicles belonging to officials of the militant Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Sunday, the latest in a series of attacks in Gaza attributed to extremists who have aligned themselves with the Islamic State group.

Witnesses told local journalists that there were four explosions at three sites in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of the Palestinian coastal enclave of Gaza around 6 a.m. At one location there was new graffiti of the Islamic State flag with the declaration “Shariah will win,” referring to the legal code of Islam based on the Quran.

Health officials in Gaza said two people in nearby homes were injured by shattered glass. Photographs posted to social media showed a dark gray truck with its back blown off and the shell of a badly burned sedan.

“Some sinful hands are trying to undermine the resistance,” the military wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said in a joint statement. “The perpetrators put themselves in the box of treason,” the groups added, saying such attacks serve Israel’s “objectives” in destabilizing Gaza. [Continue reading…]

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