Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China

long live the bottom line and obscene profits

Where did all the people and animals go?

NYT April 30, 2007
Filler in Animal Feed Is Open Secret in China
By DAVID BARBOZA and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
ZHANGQIU, China, April 28 — As American food safety regulators head to China to investigate how a chemical made from coal found its way into pet food that killed dogs and cats in the United States, workers in this heavily polluted northern city openly admit that the substance is routinely added to animal feed as a fake protein.
For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
Melamine is at the center of a recall of 60 million packages of pet food, after the chemical was found in wheat gluten linked this month to the deaths of at least 16 pets and the illness of possibly thousands of pets in the United States.
No one knows exactly how melamine (which is not believed to be particularly toxic) became so fatal in pet food, but its presence in any form of American food is illegal.
The link to China has set off concerns among critics of the Food and Drug Administration that ingredients in pet food as well as human food, which are increasingly coming from abroad, ...full text

Putin to Suspend Pact With NATO

"everyone is expected to live up to treaty obligations,”

"in 2001 the US administration unilaterally pulled out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972" .

.......and so we march closer to wisdom and understanding with nuclear toys to play with

NYT April 27, 2007
Putin to Suspend Pact With NATO
By C. J. CHIVERS and MARK LANDLER
MOSCOW, April 26 — President Vladimir V. Putin said Thursday that Russia would suspend its compliance with a treaty on conventional arms in Europe that was forged at the end of the cold war, opening a fresh and intense dispute in the souring relations between NATO and the Kremlin.
The announcement, made in Mr. Putin’s annual address to Parliament, underscored the Kremlin’s anger at the United States for proposing a new missile defense system in Europe, which the Bush administration insists is meant to counter potential threats from North Korea and Iran.
Mr. Putin suggested that Russia would use its future compliance with the treaty as a bargaining point in that disagreement with the United States.
The new standoff also demonstrated the Kremlin’s lingering frustration over NATO’s expansion toward Russia’s borders and with the treaties negotiated in the 1990s when Russia, still staggering through its post-Soviet woes, was much weaker and less assertive on the world stage than it is today.
Although Mr. Putin did not mention it on Thursday, Russia is angry that in 2001 the Bush administration unilaterally pulled out of the Antiballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.
On Monday, Mr. Putin’s defense minister, Anatoly E. Serdyukov, rejected an offer from the visiting American defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to share antimissile technology, which had been intended as a way to assuage Moscow’s opposition to Washington’s missile defense plan.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in Oslo at a gathering of diplomats from NATO countries, reacted coldly to Mr. Putin’s speech.
“These are treaty obligations, and everyone is expected to live up to treaty obligations,” she said.
Ms. Rice also dismissed Russian concerns that introducing new military technology to Europe could upset the balance of forces there and set off an escalation that could lead to a new cold war. She called such claims “purely ludicrous” and said the scale of the proposed missile defense system was obviously far too small to defend against the Russian nuclear arsenal.
Though the step by Mr. Putin was incremental, it was highly symbolic and reminiscent of brinkmanship in the cold war.
The agreement in question, the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, known by the initials C.F.E., was signed in 1990 by the members of NATO and of the Warsaw Pact, including Russia.
It required the reduction and relocation of much of the main battle equipment then located along the East-West dividing lines, including tanks, artillery pieces, armored vehicles and attack aircraft. It also established an inspection regime.
Under the treaty ... full text

Starving the poor "to feed automobiles"

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

Latin America Divided Over Ethanol
MEXICO CITY and CARACAS, Venezuela, April 22, 2007
(Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Sara Miller Llana.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez calls the boom in ethanol the equivalent of starving the poor "to feed automobiles " Ethanol, which is derived from crops such as corn or sugar, is seen by some as a green alternative, a rising star on the path toward reducing independence on foreign petroleum. But it's not just Mr. Chávez who is questioning whether the benefits outweigh the unintended consequences. Now poultry industry executives, who have seen the price of feedstock go up; Mexican consumers, facing a 60 percent jump in the cost of tortillas; and even environmentalists, who look at the amount of fertilizer that will be needed to grow extra crops, are wondering aloud whether ethanol will help or hurt Latin American economies. The South American energy summit that concluded in Venezuela this week provided the latest platform for critics. Even though the debate has been cast as another issue in the long line of ideological battles aligning Chávez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro against the U.S., some analysts say that their point is larger than political: If the price for staple food items rises across the globe because of demand, Latin America will be one of the hardest-hit regions. "I think people worry that rich Americans are trying to fuel cars at the expense of hungry people in poorer countries," says Janet Larsen, director of research at the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. "This increased push for ethanol production could be an incredible foreign policy blunder." What we are seeing now, she says, is the beginning of a very long debate....full text

Pollution: A life and death issue

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

Pollution: A life and death issue
By Alex Kirby BBC News website environment correspondent
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2004/planet/default.stm
As part of Planet Under Pressure , a BBC News website series looking at some of the biggest environmental issues facing humanity, Alex Kirby considers the Earth's growing pollution problem.
One of the main themes of Planet Under Pressure is the way many of the Earth's environmental crises reinforce one another.
Pollution is an obvious example - we do not have the option of growing food, or finding enough water, on a squeaky-clean planet, but on one increasingly tarnished and trashed by the way we have used it so far.
Cutting waste and clearing up pollution costs money. Yet time and again it is the quest for wealth that generates much of the mess in the first place.
Living in a way that is less damaging to the Earth is not easy, but it is vital, because pollution is pervasive and often life-threatening.
· Air: The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel. Most are in poor countries.
· Water: Diseases carried in water are responsible for 80% of illnesses and deaths in developing countries, killing a child every eight seconds. Each year 2.1 million people die ...full text

Global Warming Called Security Threat

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

NYT April 15, 2007
Global Warming Called Security Threat

(& Could Global Warming Cause War? Christian Science Monitor - below)

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
For the second time in a month, private consultants to the government are warning that human-driven warming of the climate poses risks to the national security of the United States.
A report, scheduled to be published on Monday but distributed to some reporters yesterday, said issues usually associated with the environment — like rising ocean levels, droughts and violent weather caused by global warming — were also national security concerns.
“Unlike the problems that we are used to dealing with, these will come upon us extremely slowly, but come they will, and they will be grinding and inexorable,” Richard J. Truly, a retired United States Navy vice admiral and former NASA administrator, said in the report.
The effects of global warming, the study said, could lead to large-scale migrations, increased border tensions, the spread of disease and conflicts over food and water. All could lead to direct involvement by the United States military.
The report recommends that climate change be integrated into the nation’s security strategies and says the United States “should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.”
The report, called “National Security and the Threat of Climate Change,” was commissioned by the Center for Naval Analyses ...full text

The Squeezing Of America's Middle Class

WHAT PART OF FREEDOM INEXTRICABLY INTERWOVEN WITH EVOLUTION, SURVIVAL, WISDOM, UNDERSTANDING AND QUALITY OF LIFE, IS STILL NOT UNDERSTOOD ON THE ENERGY FRONT? Evolution Freedom Survival

The Squeezing Of America's Middle Class
NEW YORK, April 15, 2007
(CBS) The idea of a thriving middle class has always been at the heart of the American dream. The concept really took off in the wake of World War II, when the GI Bill started helping everyday Americans pay for college or vocational education and take out loans to buy homes. By the 1950s, TV shows like "Leave It to Beaver" were presenting an idealized picture of middle-class life. Dad worked, Mom took care of the kids, and there wasn't much talk about how they'd pay the bills. But today the American middle class is struggling. "It seems as if health care, retirement security, being able to pay for kids' college, being able to hold on to and afford a home are real sources of anxiety for middle-class Americans today," Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at Yale University, told Sunday Morning correspondent Rita Braver. Hacker, an author of a new book that focuses on problems facing America's middle class, says the middle class is more of a symbol than a concrete definition. "I think the symbol is people who are not rich, who have to work hard, usually both parents are working," he said. "They probably have children, that's sort of the image that we have. It's a hard-working middle-class family with kids, making $60,000 to $80,000 a year and feeling really strained economically ...full text

Pope criticizes the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism

"Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."
by Ken Reiner: I view the continuing growth of corporate power and its despotic control of governments throughout the world, including our own, as a socio-economic disease. While Mussolini and others named it "Fascism," I call it "Corporism" because that name better reveals its underlying institutional structure. I would define Corporism as the domination of government and society by the emergence and power of the giant publicly-traded multinational corporations and financial institutions, organized in totalitarian hierarchies, which singly and in combinations buy or destroy their competitors, corrupt the politics of nations, and seize, hoard, and wield for themselves most of the wealth of the human race.

Pope criticizes the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism
In a new book, Benedict XVI decries power of rich over the poor
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:11 p.m. CT April 13, 2007

VATICAN CITY - Benedict XVI criticizes the “cruelty” of capitalism and colonialism and the power of the wealthy over the poor in his first book as pope released on Friday.
Benedict began writing his personal meditation on Jesus Christ’s teachings, entitled “Jesus of Nazareth,” in 2003 when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He stressed that the book is an expression of his “personal search for the face of the Lord” and is by no means official Catholic Church doctrine.
“Everyone is free, then, to contradict me,” he wrote.
Benedict — a prolific and well-known theologian well before he became pope — thoroughly examined the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ public ministry to arrive at the foundation of the Christian faith: that Jesus is God.
Benedict said the fundamental question he is exploring in the book is what Jesus did.
“What did Jesus truly bring, if he didn’t bring peace to the world, well-being for all and a better world? What did he bring?
“The answer is very simple: God. He brought God.”
The 448-page book is due in bookstores in German, Italian and Polish on Monday, Benedict’s 80th birthday. The English edition is due for release May 15 and translations are planned for 16 other languages.
The book is the first of two volumes: Rizzoli, the Italian publisher, said Benedict is expected to write a second volume exploring the birth of Christ, his crucifixion and resurrection.
“Jesus of Nazareth” covers several key points of Jesus’ public life and ministry. An entire chapter is devoted to his baptism, another to the prayer Jesus taught the faithful, the Lord’s Prayer, and another to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, praising the poor, the meek and the hungry in the “Beatitudes.”
“Confronted with the abuse of economic power, with the cruelty of capitalism that degrades man into merchandise, we have begun to see more clearly the dangers of wealth and we understand in a new way what Jesus intended in warning us about wealth.”
In another chapter on the key Biblical parable, the Good Samaritan, Benedict decries how the wealthy have “plundered” Africa and the Third World both materially and spiritually through colonialism. ...full text

Nutrition firm or herbal cabal engaged in Mob tactics?

Corporate MO improvements beyond Enron et al? Based on news since Enron and the Pope's criticism of the ‘cruelty’ of capitalism, it is beginning to look like the "few bad apples" are coming from a barrel full of rotten apples

...........

Nutrition firm or herbal cabal?
Prosecutors allege Georgia company, execs engaged in Mob tactics
By Mike Brunker Projects Team editor
MSNBC
Updated: 12:14 p.m. CT April 12, 2007

Until late last year, Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals of Norcross, Ga., appeared to be a thriving business with a hot-selling line of natural dietary supplements. But in a bizarre case quietly unfolding in federal court in Atlanta, prosecutors allege that it was really a criminal enterprise that sold dangerous “spiked” products and was run by executives who considered assassination and blackmail to quash a federal investigation.
The allegations are the most far-ranging ever leveled against a major player in the loosely regulated dietary supplement industry, and include activities more at home in the Mob hangouts of television's Tony Soprano than a corporate boardroom. Among other things, prosecutors allege in court filings that some or all of the defendants:
· Discussed killing a U.S. Food and Drug Administration agent and blackmailing an assistant U.S. attorney. Neither plot was carried out, but a Hi-Tech co-founder was subsequently jailed after being convicted of being a felon in possession of a “firearm silencer.”
· Used the herbal stimulant ephedra in Hi-Tech diet products after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned its use on April 12, 2004, finding it presented “an unreasonable risk of illness or injury.”
· Sold "herbal" supplements that actually contained the active ingredients of prescription drugs that could interact dangerously with other medications.
· Illegally imported and sold banned steroids.
· Manufactured phony ecstasy tablets that were sold on U.S. streets.
· Created a muscle-building drink that was later marketed as a cleaning solution in an effort to mislead investigators.
The shocking allegations spring from the Sept. 7 indictment of the company and 11 executives, employees and associates for allegedly operating an illegal Internet pharmacy in Belize.
Belize lab ‘substandard and unsanitary’The defendants used numerous Web sites to advertise ... full text

How to Confine the Plants of the Future?

corporate greedy guts vs your life

A NEW generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and chemicals raise concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply. Once harvested, seeds can move easily, accidentally or deliberately, across and beyond borders on which developers depend for safety. And what happens from there is anyone’s guess.The containment practices used by developers assume an ability to control living and propagating organisms, which scientific evidence does not support. Developers say these crops are the best way to achieve the economies of scale and cost savings that will let them meet rising demand for drugs and continue to generate huge obscene profits

NYT Re: Framing
How to Confine the Plants of the Future?
By DENISE CARUSO
A NEW generation of genetically engineered crops that produce drugs and chemicals is fast approaching the market — bringing with it a new wave of concerns about the safety of the global food and feed supply.
The plants produce medicinal substances like insulin, anticoagulants and blood substitutes. They produce vaccine proteins for diseases like cholera, as well as antibodies against tooth decay and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Enzymes and other chemicals from the plants can be used for a range of industrial processes.
As in past debates over genetically modified crops, biotech developers say that the benefits outweigh the risks, and that the risks are manageable. Critics question the benefits, and say the risk of a contaminated and potentially toxic food supply is untenable.
In the middle, balancing economic benefit and public safety, are our appointed arbiters of risk, the government regulators.
Controversies over biotech risk are caused by a crisis in “official scientific expertise,” according to Jerome Ravetz, an associate fellow at the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilization at the University of Oxford.
The crisis, he said, stems from the conflicting roles of government. On one side, businesses provide regulators with scientific evidence about the risk and safety of their product innovations. On the other, suspicious citizens demand that regulators challenge that evidence.
The side whose expertise is accepted as “official” calls the shots.
So far, the business sector has tipped the scales in its favor. Despite science-based concerns voiced by farmers, environmentalists and even its own researchers ...full text

Shocking Mismanagement: Iraqi details Inept US Occupation

Who could have imagined !!!! "THREATS ABOUT AIRPLANES AS WEAPONS PRIOR TO 9/11" By: Dr. Matthew Robinson
Associate Professor of Criminal Justice Appalachian State University http://www.justiceblind.com/airplanes.html

Shocking Mismanagement: Iraqi details Inept US Occupation
Insider: Missteps Soured Iraqis on U.S.
Iraq Government Official Says 'Incompetent' U.S. Management Turned Iraqis Against Americans
By CHARLES J. HANLEY AP Special Correspondent
The Associated Press
NEW YORK - In a rueful reflection on what might have been, an Iraqi government insider details in 500 pages the U.S. occupation's "shocking" mismanagement of his country a performance so bad, he writes, that by 2007 Iraqis had "turned their backs on their would-be liberators."
"The corroded and corrupt state of Saddam was replaced by the corroded, inefficient, incompetent and corrupt state of the new order," Ali A. Allawi concludes in "The Occupation of Iraq," newly published by Yale University Press.
Allawi writes with authority as a member of that "new order," having served as Iraq's trade, defense and finance minister at various times since 2003. As a former academic, at Oxford University before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, he also writes with unusual detachment.
The U.S.- and British-educated engineer and financier is the first senior Iraqi official to look back at book length on his country's four-year ordeal. It's an unsparing look at failures both American and Iraqi, an account in which the word "ignorance" crops up repeatedly.
First came the "monumental ignorance" of those in Washington pushing for war in 2002 without "the faintest idea" of Iraq's realities. "More perceptive people knew instinctively that the invasion of Iraq would open up the great fissures in Iraqi society," he writes.
What followed was the "rank amateurism and swaggering arrogance" of the occupation, under L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which took big steps with little consultation with Iraqis ...full text

Rally Marks Anniversary of Baghdad's Fall

"Freedom & Liberation" begins to resemble the WMDs "Weapons of Mass Donkeys" found in Iraq. BAGHDAD (AP) "After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.''

April 9, 2007
Rally Marks Anniversary of Baghdad's Fall
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:23 a.m. ET
BAGHDAD (AP). Tens of thousands marched through the streets of two Shiite holy cities to denounce the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The rally was called for by powerful Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who commands an enormous following among Iraq's majority Shiites and has close allies in the Shiite-dominated government.
A day earlier, the renegade cleric issued a statement ordering his militiamen to redouble their battle to oust American forces and argued that Iraq's army and police should join him in defeating ''your archenemy.''
On Monday, demonstrators marched from Kufa to neighboring Najaf, 100 miles south of Baghdad, with two cordons of Iraqi police lining the route.
Some at the rally waved small Iraqi flags; others hoisted up a giant flag 10 yards long. Leaflets fluttered through the breeze reading: ''Yes, Yes to Iraq'' and ''Yes, Yes to Muqtada. Occupiers should leave Iraq.''
''The enemy that is occupying our country is now targeting the dignity of the Iraqi people,'' said lawmaker Nassar al-Rubaie, head of al-Sadr's bloc in parliament, as he marched. ''After four years of occupation, we have hundreds of thousands of people dead and wounded.''
A senior official in al-Sadr's organization in Najaf, Salah al-Obaydi, called the rally a ''call for liberation.''
''We're hoping that by next year's anniversary, we will be an independent and liberated Iraq ...full text

Global Warming To Hit World's Poor:

Repeat: Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming, confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems Fuel 2000 and Beyond

Billions face climate change risk BBC - Billions of people face shortages of food and water and increased risk of flooding, experts at a major climate change conference have warned.

Panel: Global Warming a Threat to Earth - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - April 6, 2007 BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- An international global warming conference approved a report Friday warning of dire threats to the Earth and to mankind -- from increased hunger to the extinction of species -- unless the world adapts to climate change and halts its progress. Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings.

Climate Report Warns of Faster and Wider Damage NYT April 6, 2007 By REUTERS.

Global Warming To Hit World's Poor:
April 6, 2007 BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- An international global warming conference approved a report Friday warning of dire threats to the Earth and to mankind -- from increased hunger to the extinction of species -- unless the world adapts to climate change and halts its progress. Agreement came after an all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings ... full text

No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action

Flagstaff's Arizona State University had proposed desalination plants and a pipeline from the Gulf of California years ago through a solar hydrogen economy, but the billion dollar pipeline from the drying Colorado river won out. The tug of war has begun. The water crisis stands out as significantly important because the oceans have not run dry. And we live in the 21st Century! Clean, purified, desalinated water is not being transported (using ultra modern, ‘past due’ methods and means) wherever needed solely due to One Obstacle – Energy and the stagnant science of energy evolution

NYT April 4, 2007
No Longer Waiting for Rain, an Arid West Takes Action
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD and KIRK JOHNSON
A Western drought that began in 1999 has continued after the respite of a couple of wet years that now feel like a cruel tease. But this time people in the driest states are not just scanning the skies and hoping for rescue.
Some $2.5 billion in water projects are planned or under way in four states, the biggest expansion in the West’s quest for water in decades. Among them is a proposed 280-mile pipeline that would direct water to Las Vegas from northern Nevada. A proposed reservoir just north of the California-Mexico border would correct an inefficient water delivery system that allows excess water to pass to Mexico.
In Yuma, Ariz., federal officials have restarted an idled desalination plant, long seen as a white elephant from a bygone era, partly in the hope of purifying salty underground water for neighboring towns.
The scramble for water is driven by the realities of population growth, political pressure and the hard truth that the Colorado River, a 1,400-mile-long silver thread of snowmelt and a lifeline for more than 20 million people in seven states, is providing much less water than it had.
According to some long-term projections, the mountain snows that feed the Colorado River will melt faster and evaporate in greater amounts with rising global temperatures, providing stress to the waterway even without drought. This year, the spring runoff is expected to be about half its long-term average. In only one year of the last seven, 2005, has the runoff been above average.
Everywhere in the West, along the Colorado and other rivers, as officials search for water to fill current and future needs, tempers are flaring among competing water users, old rivalries are hardening and some states are waging legal fights.
In one of the most acrimonious disputes, Montana filed a suit in February ... full text

Global Warming Expert Fears 'Refugee Crisis'

Repeat: Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming, confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems Fuel 2000 and Beyond

Global Warming Expert Fears 'Refugee Crisis'
ABC The Second of Four Major Reports on Climate Change Says It's a Different World Already
By BILL BLAKEMORE
April 2, 2007 — - Within two or three decades, there could be one and a half billion people without enough water, according to a new report on the impacts of global warming.
Such droughts would produce "refugee crises like we've never seen," as one of the study's lead authors told ABC News.
Scientists working on the "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" report have been telling ABC News for months that its findings, once public, would be alarming. The report is being prepared by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of 2,500 experts in the field.
Scientists are hammering out that report's final wording in Brussels and are due to announce it on Friday.
But its basic findings, they say, won't change.
Drafts of the IPCC report depict a world already changed dramatically in the past 35 years by manmade global warming, with increasing drought, heavy precipitation and flooding.
It also says humankind is in for much worse in the next few decades.
The IPCC scientists are finalizing one chart that projects how, with each degree of future warming, Earth's natural life-support systems break down more and more.
It predicts mountain glaciers and snow-pack melting away around the world, faster than scientists thought possible ... full text

The Age Of Warming

Repeat: Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming, confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems Fuel 2000 and Beyond

The Age Of Warming
April 1, 2007
(CBS) If you were waiting for the day global warming would change the world, that day is here. It’s happening, far from civilization’s notice, in a place about as remote as you can get. Scientists believed Antarctica, at the bottom of the world, was too vast, too remote, to be bothered by climate change any time soon. But now glaciers are setting speed records for melting. Whole colonies of penguins are disappearing. Why does it matter? Antarctica is a climate giant, driving ocean and wind currents worldwide, with enormous potential to raise sea levels. To find out what’s happening down south, 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley set out on an expedition; the first stop was the high mountains of Patagonia in Chile, where you can actually see a new age beginning.
The glacier O’Higgins, a mass of ice, has been frozen for tens of thousands of years in the mountains of southern Chile. O’Higgins is spectacular for its beauty, but for a scientist like Gino Casassa it’s breathtaking for the speed it is disappearing – the glacier is morphing into a lake, retreating more than any glacier ...full text

Report: Climate Change Already Happening

Scientific ignorance, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming confirms an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options which modern civilization requires for survival. The thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications. From the global warming threat to the ongoing resource wars, (food, water, resource limitations), all these basic problems are eliminated in a normal evolutionary progression of energy systems

Report: Climate Change Already Happening
CBS AMSTERDAM, Netherlands, April 1, 2007
(AP) For people in their 30s, climate change already has reshaped the world to which they were born. By the time they reach retirement age, the changes will be far more dramatic — and perhaps life-threatening on a massive scale, an authoritative U.N. study will say this week. On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a network of more than 2,000 scientists, opens a five-day meeting in Brussels, Belgium, to finalize a report on how warming will affect the globe and whether humans can do anything about it. The panel will paint a bleak picture of increasing poverty, paucity of drinking water, melting glaciers and polar ice caps, and a host of vanishing species by mid-century unless action is taken to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. Some regions like parts of North America and northern Europe will see some benefits, at least in the short term, from longer growing seasons and milder winters.
Watch A Preview:The Age Of WarmingScott Pelley travels to the world’s fastest warming place -the South Pole.
Even the most optimistic forecasts say the climate will continue to change and the planet will be irrevocably damaged. The question is, how much? "We are going into a realm the Earth has not seen for a very long time ... over the past 800,000 years," said Camille Parmesan, a University of Texas biologist who has studied the effects of climate change on wildlife and was a reviewer of the upcoming report. A draft of the IPCC's summary has been obtained by The Associated Press, but policy makers will go over the document line-by-line this week before unveiling the final text Friday. It will then become a guideline for governments to determine policies and draft legislation. About 285 delegates from 124 countries are attending, along with more than 50 of the scientists who compiled the report and dozens of observers from nongovernment, mostly environmental, organizations. The closed-door talks are likely to focus on predictions of how many people will be at high risk... full text