Geoengineering Scheme Could Worsen Global Warming

Monday, October 15, 2012 by Common Dreams

Project Violates UN Resolutions, Dupes Indigenous Pacific Nation

A California businessman duped an indigenous village into spending $1 million on a geoengineering project that was "a blatant violation of international resolutions"—and that scientists say could exacerbate global warming and ocean acidification.

Yellow and brown colors show relatively high concentrations of chlorophyll in August 2012, after iron sulphate was dumped into the Pacific Ocean as part of a controversial geoengineering scheme. (Photo: Giovanni/Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center/NASA.)

 

Russ George dumped 100 tons of iron sulphate into the Pacific ocean about 200 nautical miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii, "one of the world's most celebrated, diverse ecosystems," Martin Lukacs of the Guardian reported Monday.

The iron spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square meters, which Kristina M. Gjerde, a  senior high seas advisor for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said "appears to be a blatant violation of two international resolutions … and does not appear to even have had the guise of legitimate scientific research."

"It is difficult if not impossible to detect and describe important effects that we know might occur months or years later," said John Cullen, an oceanographer at Dalhousie University. "Some possible effects, such as deep-water oxygen depletion and alteration of distant food webs, should rule out ocean manipulation. History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired."

George convinced the indigenous village of Haida Gwaii to spend more than $1 million of its own funds on the project. They were told the "salmon enhancement project" would benefit the ocean.

Guujaaw, president of Haida Gwaii, told the Guardian that the village council would not have agreed had they known the project violated international convention.

"It is now more urgent than ever that governments unequivocally ban such open-air geoengineering experiments," he said. "They are a dangerous distraction providing governments and industry with an excuse to avoid reducing fossil fuel emissions."

Libor Investigation Reveals Widespread Corruption

(We've lamented the lack of bankers being prosecuted for the fraud they pulled on the US and world. The fallout from this might mean bankers' heads will roll...--jef)

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Sunday, July 15, 2012 by Common Dreams
 

As details of the investigation into the Libor rate rigging scandal are known, a picture of systemic corruption among the biggest banks is emerging.

While Barclays is the only bank to have admitted wrongdoing at this time, the New York Times reports that "the multiyear investigation has ensnared more than 10 big banks in the United States and abroad."

The Times adds: "Given the scope of the problems and the number of institutions involved, the rate-rigging investigation could provide a signature moment to hold big banks accountable for their activities during the financial crisis."

'It’s hard to imagine a bigger case than Libor,' said one of the government officials involved in the case."

That comment is echoed by Andrew Lo, a professor of finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said, "This dwarfs by orders of magnitude any financial scams in the history of markets."

The Independent also reports on the systemic problem, writing that the British Financial Services Authority inquiry into the rate rigging scandal "suggests that there was a culture of rate-rigging in the investment banking division that Mr Diamond ran during the focus of the investigation, from 2005 to 2009, which might have been the cause of Libor-fixing spreading elsewhere.

A source close to the Treasury Select Committee said: 'One of the questions that still needs to be answered is if this was some sort of virus that was spreading through the system from Barclays when people left to go elsewhere, or was it just a dealing room where people were using their old contacts, be it at Barclays or anywhere else?'"

Blogging on Firedoglake, Scarecrow notes that the real victims of the scandal got left in the dark for years. "The thing that has apparently shocked so many people in the last few weeks since the story broke on Barclays’ bid rigging settlement with US and UK regulators is that no one seems to have warned the victims that the entire structure for setting interest rates on consumer loans, mortgages, municipal bonds, insurance swaps and everything else in the economy — literally trillions of dollars in transactions — was rigged. It’s 2012, and they (the victims) just found out, so now there are hundreds of entities lining up to sue the world's largest banksters for one the largest frauds in history."